All posts by Robby

Splish, Splash

Training

April 5th,  Tuesday,    11 p.m.

I spent this cold and windy afternoon at a Jackson Liberty boys track and field meet.  During the meet I managed to get in about 2 miles of work on the track. It didn’t feel like enough work.  So when I got home decided to go to our clubhouse to swim.  I did get in 20 minutes lap swimming and a 15 minute whirlpool.  My body has missed its time in the whirlpool while I was away.  This essentially amounts to a day of rest.   I will have to get back on the road tomorrow.

Comments   –  Thank you to everyone who has commented.  

I have had some very thoughtful communications from fends and  former athletes on a few previous posts.  I do appreciate the comments very much and encourage anyone who is reading  to make a comment even if it’s just to say, “Hello.

Self coaching reminder-

Two things  have had a positive effect  for me on sore muscles and joints. The first is to heat the affected area for 15 minutes prior to setting out on a workout,  and the second is to walk slowly and then more quickly for the first 10 minutes.   The result has been much more comfortable runs even though  the total workout time in minutes is longer.  I am speaking from the point of view of someone who has the time,  first to heat and 2nd to walk before a workout.  We are + 70 runners.

Stats-

a.m. HR @ 54BPM

weight    –  153#

I-Mad  –  4.5   Still sore.    I am  hoping  the day off and Whirlpool will have a positive effect.

Workout –   2 miles on track & grass + 20 minutes of laps in pool +15 minute whirlpool

 

When the rubber meets the rubber

Training

April 4th , Monday,  8 p.m.

55 degrees and light rain and a steady wind about 8 to 10 miles during workout.

I ran today’s workout on the track at Jackson Liberty High School.  I had not been on a rubber track since December because the high schools in Florida would not allow community residents to run on the high school track. The rubberized surface felt like an old friend as I did my one-mile warm-up.   My body was still a little sore and tired today, but I pushed through managing to complete  4 miles on the track.   I never took my sweats off this day because the weather seemed too  raw.  I had prepared with heat,  my lower leg compression sleeves and plenty of layers clothing.  The soft surface provided the courage I needed to push through. The second and third miles consisted of running  two 100 meter pickups each lap for 8 laps.   I began with very easy pickups but was able to increase the intensity for the last 7 or 8.   My sore left Achilles tendon was speaking to me throughout but not very loudly. Including 16 surges is a nice effort on this rainy day.   Completed the workout with a steady one mile cool down.  It can be logged as a successful workout!

I concluded post-workout ritual with chocolate milk,  ice on lower legs and my green tea &  tart cherry cocktail.   Just finished a mighty vegetable salad of lettuce,  tomato, onions,  cucumbers and peppers.   Very delicious!.

Gentle reader may notice the absence of references to time today.  That is because my Garmin wrist watch charger remains in Florida and my  watch is out of power.  It has been found and I anticipate receiving it in the mail in a few days.  I am also posting my Vital Statistics at the end of the block today on the recommendation my wife, Arlene.

 

In a separate post today I have published Coach Rich Refi’s self coaching document in which he lists  suggestions for committed runners to follow in order to maximize their training.  Rich  distributes this to all of his athletes annually. He has given me permission to publish it on this blog.  Check it out and print it .  It has helped me to keep focused.  It is on my bathroom mirror.

Weight  154#

AM HR  54   –  Back to normal

I-Mad  @  4+   Still too elevated                     Still monitoring the effects of relaxed shoelaces.   So far I am pleased with the outcome.

Total workout   –  4 miles with 16 moderate 100m surges

Be careful in the snow tomorrow brave  runners.

 

 

Coach Refi’s Self Coaching Checklist

Training

Coach Rich Refi of Hillsborough High School has graciously agreed to allow me to publish on this blog his self coaching checklist.  This checklist contains a series of items that the committed runner can keep track of daily to be sure that his body is being prepared for Peak Performance.  Coach Refi has been a distance coach for over 20 years, ,and I regard him as one of the top distance coaches in the state of New Jersey.  His girls cross country teams have been at the top of the state’s performers consistently for the last 10 years.  This document contains the collected wisdom of many years of successful coaching experience. I believe this checklist can be helpful to any distance runner from teenage to + 70.

I was very happy to reconnect this afternoon with the Liberty High School distance coaches and athletes.  I had a very enjoyable time during the previous cross country season with these gentlemen and these fine young men.  I look forward to spending some time with the team this spring and volunteering once again in the fall.  In speaking with these young men today the subject of Coach Refi’s checklist came up, and told them I would publish it on my blog.   So, thank you coach Refi and here it is!

It would be an excellent idea for any Committed  Runner to print and post this document in his or her home, bedroom or locker.

⊙☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
Coach Refi ‘s  Self Coaching Reminder Checklist     90–95% of my day

Am I keeping my running log updated daily?

Did I sleep enough last night? 8-9 hours? How hard was it to wake up?     *Sleep deficit can result in a 10% loss in performance.

Did I take my morning heart rate for 60 seconds today and record it  ?

Did I eat a good breakfast or grab something as I was running out the door?

Did I eat 3 square meals + 2-3 snacks? ~

Where did my protein and iron come from?~ How many servings of fruits and veggies did I eat? 7-9?

A banana a day keeps the cramps away!

~Am I really taking in enough healthycalories everyday to fuel my training?

Am I drinking enough water every day?  ~Minimum of 1/2 body weight in ounces + more for training.~128 lb. athlete needs to drink more than 1/2 gallon per day.~Intake should be consistent all day (3-4 oz. every 30 minutes).~Should drink a glass of water 2-3 hours before going to bed.

~Am I rarely thirsty and is my urine light yellow?   *A 1% loss in hydration can result in a 10% loss in performance.

Did I drink chocolate milk and water right after my run?~What about a small protein and carb snack within 30 minutes?

Am I being proactive about preventing injuries?~Did I roll out?~Did I rope stretch and/or static stretch after my workout?~Did I take an ice bath?          ~Am I icing after runs whether sore or not?~

Am I rotating my shoes each day?

Am I thinking positively?~

Did I look at my goal today?~Do I carry a written goal with me?~

How often do I perform positive mental rehearsal?*

The best feeling is taking the starting line knowing I am well prepared.

I AM READY TO RUN FAST! 

_________________________
-I will only personally add the following.   Always , everyday,  bring your sweatpants and sweatshirt to practice to warm up.  This should not be an option. Your muscles love to be warm help them out!

I’m walking and recovering.

Training

April 3rd Sunday 5:30 p.m.

It is a bright,  sunny,  Blue Sky,  very windy,  38 degree day.                           Welcome to April in New Jersey!

AM HR at 58BPM –  still a little high

I-Mad   =  4   after a long sleep

Weight =   154#

Today I walked briskly for 1 hour covering 3.25 miles.  My body was pretty sore all over when I woke this morning.   Neck, shoulders, upper back, lower back, butt, hips, all tight and achey.  I am thinking delayed onset road fatigue is the only answer.  (DORF) ?  Ha,Ha!  I will not try to coin that phrase,  but I think that is what I’m feeling today.  So I arose had coffee and some cookies and went back to bed until 1:30pm.   Determined to get out of the house for some form of exercise,  I slowly dressed knowing I wasn’t going to be running.  It turned out to be a quite enjoyable  60 minute walk around the neighborhood.  Tomorrow back to training.

Tomorrow I’m planning to visit the Jackson Liberty track practice after school to reunite with the distance team down there.  That will also give me an opportunity to do a little bit of interval work on that track.  It has been quite a while.

Happy training!

 

 

College– Can’t ‘beat’ a workout

History

This has been a very difficult post for me to create.  I never thought it would be,  but I have been thinking about it for almost two weeks now.   College was a very disappointing,  frustrating and confusing time for me.   I didn’t become a national class runner.    I didn’t make it to the Olympics.  I didn’t improve any of my times from high school.    I graduated from Seton Hall with a degree in social sciences,  a minor in English and the required minor  in theology/ philosophy.  I’m very thankful to Seton Hall University and Coach John Gibson for the opportunity to attend the college for four years with no payments.   I actually enjoyed the academic classes in college.    Philosophy, history,  government,  politics  and classical literature were all interesting to me.    I learned how to write.   I learned how to think logically.   And I graduated with a teaching certificate that allowed me to get a job thanks to a wise counselor who transferred me into Department of Education as I ended my junior year.    All athletes were required to have their schedule approved by a counselor for each semester. I think that is a very wise policy.

But running was a totally different matter. Let’s just say that in  for years of college I never beat a single workout.  My muscles were constantly sore  and I was frequently too seriously injured to train.   As an 18 year old I never figured out why this was so.  Strangely,  I haven’t thought much about it for over 50 years.  That may have been just acceptance of defeat,  or possibly just repression .   So,  when I started writing this blog and decided to talk about my history as a runner,  I had to go back and think about what happened in college.  I now have about 40 years of experience as a coach to draw upon to try to help explain this turn of events. So here goes.

This may be a bit long so you may choose  to completely avoid reading it.   But I want to put it on paper for myself.

In the two recruiting classes of 1960  &  61 Coach Gibson had brought in 9 half milers who had run 1:58 or better in high school and myself at 1:59 flat.   I was a classic cross-country runner.   I never broke :53.5  for a 440.  That was running from start to finish full out.    I spent four years running incredibly difficult workouts designed for middle distance runners who run 1:53 for the 880.   My conclusion is today that those workouts  did nothing but  shred my long fiber, slow twitch,  distance running muscles.    Five of the guys recruited in those  two classes did run 1:53 or better before graduation .   The other five of us never improved one second.    I would run the first few intervals of these workouts with those very fast guys and then my calf muscles would seize and I had to quit the workout.   Coach Gibson came to the conclusion that I was not trying very hard.   He  told me that I should appreciate more the opportunity  that the university was giving me to get a free college education.   He also told me that my brother, John,  threw up  on the track every day during  his workout for 4 years while he was at Seton Hall ,  every day!   That,  I am sure  he concluded,  was a demonstration of someone who appreciateed his scholarship.  So, I tried harder and continued to fail, constsntly exhausted.   It is truly a sad story.   I’m not sure if I realized how sad at the time,  but I know I was very depressed.   I even trained on my own down at Lincoln Park on days off hoping maybe I could catch up.   But it wasn’t to be.

This brings us to the title of the post today.  I never beat a single workout in 4 years of college.   Every day I left practice defeated, exhausted and discouraged.  Unlike in High School,  I dreaded going out to practice each day.   I have to say the guys on the team were great to me.   Every time I nearly completed a full practice they would encourage me and tell me I was getting better and things ware going to get better.  They were all very nice young men.   I left college still loving track but disappointed in my own career.

There is a happy ending though.  Eight years later I became a running coach.   I vowed that my athletes would never be ‘beaten’ by a workout.   It is a policy I have followed for 40 years, and I believe the results speak for themselves.

During my coaching career I have had the pleasure and honor of coaching some of the most outstanding High School distance runners in the state of New Jersey.  Four of them Andy Martin, Brad Hudson, Brendan Heffernan and Chris Robinson won the New Jersey Meet of Champions.  Brendan was also National Champion .  One thing all of these guys had in common was they could not break 53 seconds for 400 meters and ran 800 metres just under two minutes. They were classic distance runners like me.  Now I am self- coaching my 70+ slow twitch muscles and having a blast.

Further details of my coaching career will follow in the next history post.

 

Still Driving

Life - Other than running ?

April 1st,   Friday,  11 p.m.

Today was a blur of 12 hours on the road from Durham,  North Carolina to Jackson,  New Jersey.  There were traffic jams everywhere and a final supercell storm as we entered New Jersey over the Delaware Memorial Bridge.   Every person in America was driving a car on Route 95 today!

Too tired to attempt a workout tonight.  I cannot wait to get on the road tomorrow and start blogging about training once again.

I hope that   my readers  miss my training log as much as I miss running and sharing.

 

JUST DRIVING

Life - Other than running ?

March 31st, Thursday

Left St. Augustine this morning for a long day of driving.  Heavy cloud cover from Florida to North Carolina, not a single break.  Luckily no rain. There were a number of slowdowns and stops along Route 95, very rare on a Thursday morning.   So, the projected seven-hour drive took nine hours.

Survived on those handy and tasty PB&J sandwiches.   We finally arrived in Durham at about 6 p.m., had dinner in room.  Now resting for an early departure  in the morning.  No swim…

My legs were and stiff while driving today, no doubt some of that DOMS.  I did not stop to check weight,  morning heart rate, or  l-Mad today;  loading car and closing condo.  But I do remember thinking as I took my first few steps this morning that my Achilles tendons felt rather good, maybe at  a 2 or 2.5 – better!

Back in New Jersey tomorrow.

 

Sayonara, St. Augustine Beach

Training

Wednesday, March 30th              A stunningly beautiful spring day!

Covered 5.65 miles on the beach today in 80 minutes.  Lots of walking and slow running.  Did all the proper pre and post procedures.

AM heart rate was 57 BPM  -seems to be somewhat elevated.   I am not altogether confident of my counting procedure.   Counting for 60 seconds  is rather new to me .  For years  I used the 10-second count  with the multiple of 6 to get the full minute heart rate.    Focusing and Counting  for 60 seconds may be too much stress on this 73 year old brain.       I do not feel overtired.

Weight today  152 pounds after workout

I-Mad  Index  today 3.0    A little better

The goal today was to run relaxed, comfortable and enjoy the beach for the last time.   The beach was flat and solid and sunny with a Northeast wind very steady at about 15 mph.   I was determined to etch the scene on my brain and bank the sunshine  in my core.  I made no attempt at speed or pickups or surges.

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However, as I was running along very comfortably and mentally blogging about my college running experiences once again,  I inadvertently picked up the pace until in the last mile I was running below 9 minutes.  This is a practice I can not recommend enough to anyone who might have it in mind to start running or walking or bike-riding for that matter to help traverse the minutes and miles that are needed to make those efforts worthwhile.   It does not have to be about your training.  Write the first chapters of that book you have always wanted to complete.   It can be on any subject in which you are an expert or thoroughly interested.   It could be fishing , parenting , woodworking , coaching,  teaching , or just a novel about your life or any other subject.   I seem to have stumbled upon a way to stay healthy and active while at the same time writing about the things that have always fascinated me and defined many segments of my life.   I am currently reading Garrison Keillor’s first book about Lake Wobegon.   I have always been captivated  by his style of storytelling.   As I read his prose I can picture him weaving those tales about those extraordinary , ordinary people of Lake Wobegon in his mind as he walked or jogged or rode his bike.    Just my image, no basis in  fact.

So, today we pack the car and return into Old Town for a final dinner before we head North in the morning.

Next next two days will be on the road blogging.

PS-  Ran with loose laces again today with minimal Achilles discomfort.

Add a little SPEED

Training

March 29th Tuesday 6 p.m           Today was a hot, cloudy and humid day.  Ran five and a half miles on the beach.

Today’s weight -151 after running

I- MED 3.5 this morning   No change

Morning heart rate 56 BPM   –  okay

Set as a goal today to run some pickups in the middle of my run. It has been a while since I did any speed work.   So I heated,  put on my compression sleeves and set out to the beach.   Warm-up consisted of 23 minutes of walk and mostly light jog with sweats on.  The beach was very nice today with a pretty solid wind out of the Northeast.   After warm-up I stripped and headed South with the wind at my back planning to display some speed pickups with the wind helping me out.   Went South for 2 miles doing pickups, 75 strides with 40 at 5K pace , 20 at mile pace +  15 at Sprint space. This was a workout I had read about and tried with the Jackson Liberty cross country boys this fall. They seem to like it and it seemed to have a positive effect on their performance.  I like it!  Turned around at 2 miles and headed back into the wind.  I tried to do pickups at 8 minute pace going back. With my brain blogging ,  I managed to run more pickups than I expected at faster pace than I had hoped.   During the run I had some Achilles discomfort and had to focus on proper foot strike throughout.  But at the 2-mile mark I entered that dangerous zone  I spoke about in the last post.  This I am calling the Perceived Invulnerable Zone or PIZ.   In this Zone the runner feels as though nothing can stop him.  There is no pain and therefore,  the runner concludes there is no danger.   However, it has become my belief  that this is the most dangerous time for injuries to occur.  So, I recommend that the plus70runner  be particularly  aware and careful in the PIZ.

I managed to complete 14 pickups today with paces ranging from 6 minutes  to 8 minutes per mile . That is the most surges I have ever done.  I finished the run at 120 BPM heart rate.  That is not very high as I have finished runs much higher than that in the past.  I consider that an indication of improving aerobic strength.   One note that I failed to mention in  the previous blog concerning that 7 mile run.   In an effort to alleviate the discomfort in my achilles I loosened my shoelaces considerably during that run.   I tend to lace them up pretty tight.   But on Sunday I ran with my shoes a little bit loose.  I was happy with the effect on my achilles tendon,  but I don’t know if it is related.  Today I did the same thing with very loose laces and once again had minimal Achilles discomfort.   I don’t know if this is cause effect or simply  coincidence,  but I’m going to continue this practice and try to monitor the results.  After workout today I just had my chocolate milk, ice  and my cocktail ,  and we are getting ready to go to swing dancing tonight.  I consider this to be a very positive and successful workout,  but I have a feeling that I am going to be experiencing delayed onset muscle pain by Thursday.  DOMS  is the abbreviation for that condition, especially prevalent in older folks,  that muscle soreness occurs 48 to 72 hours after exercise rather than in the first 24 hours.   By Thursday morning we will  be on the road .  I expect that on Thursday and Friday I will get  very little running done because we will be driving home to Jackson, New Jersey.   I hope I can get into the pool in New Durham where we plan to spend Thursday night. Either way I will probably wind up with two days off the roads and give my tired legs a good rest.   I will try to complete some positive miles tomorrow, Wednesday,  as we pack to head on the road.

I’m very happy with the outcome of this two-month stay in St. Augustine this winter.  I got started on this blog and I believe that my running and training has stepped up a level as a result.