Do you want my info in list form that includes what distance race each VDOT number is?
Thanks for the info
@MissLiss279. Your peak doesn't seem to come from age or career mileage. My assumption is that your downwards trend is like you said. You continued to push the envelope in training and saw a negative response to it. So I'm eager to see how the next year or so plays out as you seem to be on the right track again.
Won't be necessary. My assumption is that your 5k, 10k, and HM races are all around the same VDOT as you go along. But that your marathon VDOT lags behind a little. Correct me if I'm wrong though.
I can't say I really know. I didn't keep an electronic log before getting my first Garmin watch and I never went back and added it up. I never did a lot of high mileage. The first full year I tracked was 2011 which started with the WDW marathon so it had a higher than normal January. Here are my totals for 2011, 2012, and 2013:
Would it be safe to say you probably averaged like 500-600 miles in 2005 to 2011? As in the volume you do have tracked in 2011 and 2012 is similar to the years prior? That would put you somewhere around 4000 career miles at peak.
Looking back the first half of 2012 was just a great year for running for me. It was a very mild winter, so I never really had a drop off in speed that normally comes with running in more clothing. Most of January and February I was in shorts. I was 7 years into running which is often considered the peak of improvement. I had broken up with my girlfriend in late 2011 so I had less other commitments. I had just started doing some more functional strength work.
At the time I ran every training runs as hard as I could. It gave me some great short term gains but my huge improvements in race times coupled with running my training runs at almost race pace caught up with me. I also met my now-wife in the spring and got a promotion at work which combined to move my priorities a bit.
So the decrease in peak could be attributed to "PR the day" type training, but also led to issues further along. Additionally, other priorities led to less training volume. So it wasn't age or career miles, but less training volume and potentially less than ideal training methodology. Although the zoomed out picture of 2010 to 2015 doesn't seem like a tremendous drop off in volume. Did you switch to easier training, but keep the volume roughly the same?
The numbers on the right are my yearly total miles as of 3/6 each year. Most years I've been consistent with 2018 being extremely low, 2021 being an outlier the other way, and the other years being pretty close up until around August where I was either training for an October full (2015 nad 2017) of just being more consistent like last year. I'm hoping to keep my mileage consistent in 2021 which should give me my first 1,000 mile year (2020 was 858) and I am toying with running a fall full depending on what the world looks like. I'll either aim for a road BQ or local first trail full depending on how I'm feeling.
And how does you average training pace in 2021 compare to say 2016-2019? Would you say your fitness is around the same level (VDOT 48-50)? So maybe around an 8:30-8:50 average training pace right now?
@DopeyBadger Here are mine. I don’t have a ton of races very where I ran hard for a time. And the two marathons may skew my graph because while I did run for a time, they were both Disney where I stopped for pics etc, and my goal in both was just to finish.
10/25/20 5K 19:11
10/4/20 Half 1:35:04
8/16/20 10K 42:53
7/11/20 5K 20:34
1/10/20 Marathon 3:56:17
10/12/19 Half 1:37:37
6/2/19 Half 1:41:30
4/4/19 10K 47:46
1/9/19 Marathon 4:24:53
11/11/18 Half 1:43:59
6/3/18 10K 47:37
4/29/18 Half 1:49:25
10/8/16 Half 1:47:00
6/14/14 5K 20:55
Thanks for sharing. You've seen an 11% increase in the 6 year span.
-What's interesting is that your HM times are just coming around to equaling your initial 5k time. What would you say is the biggest change in your training from your early days to more recently your October 2020 races?
-What's your career mileage at around now?
-What was your average training pace for your Fall 2018, 2019, and 2020 HMs races?
Biggest change was to focus on increasing speed. And someone wrote me a plan for it and it has time trials in it so I have to push myself
Pre-running career, I still ran some and was active but have no records.
2016 - C25k and then 2-3 times a week until the first snow in October. NRC says 333km but I did not use the App consistently.
2017 - First training plan and first races. 848km minimum.
2018 - Some races for time, specifically the 5k in May and the Half in September. Other races for fun. 1183km
2019 - Sole focus was to increase the distance for my first Marathon in September and for Dopey in 2020. 1505km
2020 - Ran Dopey and then all race ended up virtual so did base training until I needed a new challenge and asked
@DopeyBadger for a training plan. 1888km
2021 - I want to get to 2021km but am currently at 338km
So adding 2016 until now I would round it to 6500km or roughly 4000 miles.
I'd say you've got things clicking at the moment. It'll be interesting to see in a few years where you end up. Seems like there's still room to grow.
-That was a modified Hanson's 10k plan that I played with. Speed work was more short repeats to work on quicker foot turnover. A lot of workouts added a 4x200 at the end. It was an interesting plan that worked well for me. Career miles though 2018 was around 11,500.
Do you still incorporate some of the lessons learned from that training plan? Seems like if you want to continue to push the envelope, then that might be something to explore.
- Through 2015, I was usually under 8:20 per month. 2016-2019 was closer to 8:30, and specifically in 2018, Aug was 8:43, Sept was 8:35, Oct was 8:17, Nov 8:13, Dec was 8:16 Last year was 8:37 with no races to train for....
Seems a little quick based on your race performances. I would have estimated something around 8:50-9:10. I wonder if some combination of the cadence work from 2018 and a bit of slowing down might yield an increase.
- Two of the three were in the 60s/low 70s and around 1000% humidity at the start, in other words, the worst possible for a marathon. The third was Dopey 2018 and mainly used for photos and enjoying the experience. For the 2014 marathon, Jan pace was 8:02 and Feb was 8:09, was shooting for a 3:30 marathon. 2016 was Goofy weekend, and first time using Hansons marathon plan. Avg pace leading into the weekend was around 8:25. FYI, My PR Marathon in Jan 2017 was also a hot/humid affair that I used the Hanson plan for again and about the same training pace of 8:25 leading into the race, and had a VDOT of 41.5
So the marathon VDOTs seem to mostly be explained by far less than ideal conditions. Your 2018 spike shows that you're still capable of more in the marathon. When you did Hansons, how did you choose the pace scheme by which to train? And did you do any additional slowing in training to account for the temperature in training vs the race you chose to set up the Hansons pacing?
Comparatively, my peak VDOT is about 4 points higher (hit in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020), but yet my average training pace in is an 8:20 min/mile in 2019, 2020 was an 8:37 min/mile, and 2021 is an 8:31 min/mile so far. And that's despite me living in WI which probably has far better training weather on a normal basis than does the south. Do you think it's possible training too fast has been holding you back?
