Carbonfiberboy 

What protocol do you use for these sprints?

bruce19

Just got back in the gym and having the same reaction as OP.

work4bike

I use the Balls-to-the-Wall protocol

Seattle Forrest

For what it's worth, I'm getting about 240 grams of protein a day on a fully vegetarian diet. And there's nothing like GOMAD involved, no supplements at all, not much soy. At my size that's a lot more protein than I actually need, but it keeps me satiated. You don't need as much protein as you think you need, and you don't need meet to get it. You can eat meat if you want or like to, it just isn't a necessity.

wolfchild

How do you do it, what type of high protein foods do you eat daily ??...I am not a vegetarian and it's pretty expensive for me to get about 240 grams of protein daily form just eating food. I supplement with whey protein on top of eating food because it makes it cheaper.... and by supplementing I don't have to eat 7 meals per day which keeps my monthly grocery bill a little lower.

Carbonfiberboy 

We already knew you were tougher than the rest of us, so you're not really giving us much information.

Seattle Forrest

Breakfast is the same thing every day: 3 servings of Siggi's plain Icelandic yogurt, with half a Theo chocolate bar cut into bits and mixed in. That gets me around 80 g of protein, the non-fat one is even more, but I enjoy the creamy goodness. I drink an unflavored latte instead of plain coffee, milk adds more protein than half and half.

The rest varies. I snack on dried chickpeas a lot at my desk. I do tacos with meat substitute and lots of cheese. (Dairy is a rich source of protein, and as a vegetarian I have no qualms with yummy cheese.) We don't do pasta often but always put meat substitute in for protein. Beth learned to make some Indian sauces that are milk and curry, and get paneer thrown in.

We almost never eat bread. We'll do veggie burgers (20 g protein per patty, more in the cheese) and eat them with a fork. I found that bread is really filling, and I'd often get full before I ate much of the protein source in the meal, so I just kind of stopped for the most part.

If that's too vague, I can post what I ate for a couple days and what the numbers came to. It'd be a bit of work so I'm not gonna do it unless asked.

FWIW I don't think there's anything wrong with supplements.

work4bike

Alright, a little history on me... I'm a 53-y/o male who has been cycling (primarily commuting, but some loaded tours) since the mid-80's. I've always had an awareness of the importance of being physically fit, but as a young man I wasn't very focused and in my school-age years, I was never an exceptionally active kid, i.e. I never tried out for sports or anything like that.

The only physical activity I participated in as a young man was my cycling (primary form of transportation since I was about the age of 22) and some weightlifting, but mostly upper-body; I wrongly thought that since I rode a bike I didn't need to do lower-body weightlifting. However, I always wanted to be able to run, but I just didn't have the focus to maintain a running program – I use to really hate running, but I knew it was an important thing to maintaining a healthy body.

Fast-forward to 2005 when I retired, one of my goals was to hike the Appalachian Trail (AT), so I set off to hike the AT in March 2006. I went thru a lot of pain on that hike and I did a lot of thinking, much of that thinking was about my physical condition (I had been steadily gaining weight before that hike and no diet, nor any amount of cycling seemed to work to keep the weight off).

I'll keep it short, because I can go on and on about this and how the AT changed my life...but long story short, I became more focused on my workouts since the AT and I seem to learn more and more every year. However, I will never get to the point where I am super regimented in my workouts; however, they are far better than before the AT hike and I learn new things every year, but I'm not at the point, nor do I believe I will ever be at developing a training program. I don't log stuff, other than my runs, just to keep track of mileage and my bike mileage, but that's for keeping a maintenance log, not for measuring my performance.

I started running after the AT and I've kept it up since; I think one big reason is that hiking up and down mountains day-after-day with weight on your back is much like running, i.e. hikig up and down hills is more bio-mechanically similar to running than it is to walking on a flat surface. So basically I was practicing running the moment I stepped on the AT and it showed in my first run after the AT – it was the easiest run I had ever done to that point and it was further and faster than any time in my life.

Carbonfiberboy 

You are definitely correct in that running, especially trail running, is by far the best prep for hiking and most foot sports, even skiing.

The reason I asked about your sprint protocol is that you say you got excellent results. I'm all about results, so I wanted to know the particulars of your sprint workouts.

The usual recommendation to improve cruising speed is to do what is called "speed work." This is usually 1 or 2 sets of 6 reps of 30-45 seconds max effort with 5 minutes easy spinning between reps.

work4bike

I didn't/don't do any particular sets/reps; I simply started doing sprint start offs from redlights for as many times as I could during my rides -- I'm just too lazy to log stuff.

I remember in the beginning that I was probably doing about ten of them in a 20-mile ride (I know way too much) and I paid for it with a very painful ride home and over time I did reach a point (on a couple occasions) where I suffered from the effects of over-training, with the overall body fatigue and mental fog. That's just how I do things, I tend to overdo it in the beginning and then I re-read the articles...and I come to understand the importance of not overdoing it.

It's been some years since I started this type of workout – I think I started around 2010, because I was doing a lot of hiking in the years after my initial hike on the AT. I can say that my cruising speed has greatly improved, even when I'm not feeling well, I can maintain at least 15mph in the typical headwinds I encounter here it should be noted that I'm a Clydesdale at ~215-220 lbs and I ride a heavy hybrid bike with panniers. I often wonder if I were to ride a good road bike and lose about 30 lbs what kind of speeds I could log. I can also get up to at least 30mph in a sprint, but I'm now trying to increase that...to be continued...

Anaerobic workouts has taken my cycling to new levels and I can really feel the positive effects in just my normal spinning around town; it's almost like I can't go slower than a certain speed of 15mph, but many times I'm closer to 20 mph cruising.

I'm now incorporating this into my runs, but I've found that it's far more easier to injure myself doing the running sprints (I'm just now getting over some injuries – again I started out too hard). My cardio is at such a level that it would be very difficult to over-train it, but the musculoskeletal system is a different matter – I believe that this is the key to developing a strong body; cardio is easy to build up, the musculoskeletal, however, is the thing if you get wrong can be disastrous and really set you back in your training.

I do like Lew Hollander – I go anaerobic everyday, as he says in the 40-second point of this video.

wphamilton

I started consistently running this year @58 years, settling in at about 20 miles per week so not a lot of experience in 50+ training but FWIW, starting from that level the speed work or sprint training is nothing like it used to be, and not like on the bike. On the bike I could do what I want, as many sprint intervals, hill repeats and what-have-you as I have energy for. Not so running. The years and sheer miles of cycling that came before for one thing, but the fact that cycling is practically no impact and mostly non weight bearing is another big reason.

It's not that hard to do it, but with HIIT it's not a question of "how much can I do for X amount of improvement" any more; it's "how much can I improve without stepping over that line" where you have to take extra time to recover or heal. So I think it's better to have one or none sprinting per week, substituting threshold intervals, and just gradually increasing the intensity and/or frequency.

work4bike

Yeah, I tend to agree that I can pretty much do what I want to on the bike, especially with respect to musculoskeletal health, but not so with running. However, I've learned how to do fast running in a sensible way, mostly because I suffered some very painful injuries when I first started and I have a bad knee that was a result of a childhood injury, which just adds to the challenge of improving my running time; but I do think I'm finally on a good path now, just gotta remember that: Less is More...

I also don't think I'll be doing any sprinting any time soon while doing speedwork, which I use to incorporate (like you said, run sprints and bike sprints are two totally different animals).

For now I'm just content to do what's called Running Strides, which is just running at a very fast pace, but not forcing it like a sprint; it's more of a flow and it feels really good, except on your cardio system, which gets a serious workout. There's actually not a lot of pounding when you do Running Strides, because your feet are moving faster and so you're not coming down with all your weight, like in jogging, because of you forward momentum.

When I start off doing a Running Stride, there's a feeling of wanting to go at full speed from the get-go, but I fight that urge and start off slow, just like a jog, but steadily increase speed until I'm comfortably at an uncomfortable place, WRT cardio, but I keep the musculoskeletal part comfortable throughout the entire Stride, if I start to feel any pain, I slow it down.

I also do a lot of running drills, like in this video. They are anaerobic in nature.

wphamilton

I had to look it up - google says "your mile race pace, or roughly 85 to 95% effort". I don't run a mile at 95% but I get the picture, basically running a brisk 220 yard dash. Still can be a lot of impact if we're not careful though.

work4bike

Yeah, the pace lingo use to confuse me in how they are always given in your mile pace or 5K, 10K, marathon... pace (I was like: "how am I suppose to know my 5K pace"). To this day I still don't have a good handle what constitutes my various paces. Although, if you're a serious racer, you know your various paces, but it doesn't mean much to the rest of us that use running for recreational or general health reasons.

However, then I realized that a lot of the running articles/definitions use racer's lingo, despite most of the readers are not really serious racers, but there probably are quite a few wannabe racers reading it.

It's kind of like how when you read a lot of cycling articles it seems geared towards racers, but in reality it's being consumed by just a bunch of wannabes.

My strides are at about 85% effort, but I'm far from doing that for a full mile, but that is one of my goals.



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Carbonfiberboy 

For those who are not lightweight trained and natural runners, or those who are older, there's an alternative running style. Since it's the cutting edge thing, I've already adopted it and it works great. It's called shuffle running:
Some say that it's slow, but I understand that the female winner of last year's Kona is a shuffle runner. Similar to cycling, the trick is cadence, cadence, cadence. Keep your feet close to the ground, land directly under CG, push a little at the stride end, and turn a high cadence, at least above 80 or 160 in runner-speak.

Seattle Forrest

I see a lot of shuffle runners around Lake Union. I just thought they were tired...

You guys aren't concerned about running interference with muscle gains? I guess shuffling probably mitigates that because there's less impact?

canklecat

Couldn't finish those videos. Just skipping through both parts, it looks like 3-5 minutes of material stretched out to 45 minutes over two parts. Too much rambling, repetitive, unfocused narration and slo-mo, not enough examples of real time motion.

Basically looks like a somewhat refined version of the military or paratrooper shuffle we did to avoid injuring our knees and bodies running in heavy boots with full gear. If I run at all -- which is seldom due to a neck injury -- I do the shuffle or "glide" to minimize impact.

More like "edit, edit, edit" those videos.

At least there's less hyperbole than the other "kaidance, kaidance, kaidance" guy, durianrider.

Carbonfiberboy 

Looking at Froome's legs, I think many of us are over-muscled for this biking sport as well as for running. Look at the legs on those Kenyan gazelles. One of the things I've tried to do as I aged is to lose weight, including muscle. Runners, roadies, rock climbers, all those gravity-fighters are light. Average body composition of XC skiers was found to be 21.7 in one study. Although I am trying to put on a little muscle from now thru February because I know I'll burn it off again. For me, the hard part has always been strengthening connective tissue to prevent injury. I think running might help with that as well as with skeletal strength. That's one of the reasons I started running again a month ago, after 50 years. All the geezers we see out on the trail, skiing, biking, etc., all have one thing in common: somehow they've avoided injury/damage.

OBoile

While you are obviously free to determine your own priorities... I don't understand why you would want to lose muscle. You'll tend to lose it naturally as you age and having a decent amount of muscle mass is what keeps someone from being a frail person using a walker when they're old. Increased strength and muscle mass is also correlated with a reduced chance of death.

wphamilton

My stride cadence on long runs has been increasing, at 175-180 but I wonder if there is a pace at which the "shuffle run" becomes generally less efficient. For me around 8 minutes pace or 8:30 it feels like that's spending energy and switching back to a bigger kick-off with more air in the stride feels more efficient.

Seattle Forrest

You’re the only person I’ve ever met (or “met”) who had the explicit goal of losing muscle. If just about anyone else had said it, I would dismiss it as crazy talk.

I agree that being light is an important goal, especially around here where flat ground is fairly rare.

I guess I think muscle mass is part of injury prevention. This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately and I’ve been meaning to start a thread once I gather all my thoughts. I’m sure you know that road cycling is bad for bone density. Running and lifting both improve bone density, I don’t know to what degree or if it’s enough to counter-act a lot of hours in the saddle. So, I think of muscle as a shield layer. If I crash or fall, having muscle or fat take the brunt of the impact will protect my bones.

I’m younger than you are but I can tell which way this is going. When I’m older than you are, I want to still be around, and I want to be able to get up off the toilet myself when I’m done with it. That’s one of the reasons I do squats. I feel like cycling gives me all the leg strength I need, but as we age we lose muscle. I want to age gracefully and stay strong and independent.

Cycling is important to me, but I’m willing to give up a bit of performance on the bike in exchange for well-rounded health.

Seattle Forrest

Do you use Garmin stuff when you run? Some of their gear will record your cadence, stride length, and vertical oscillation, you can see it while you run but you can also chart it later against your pace and find out if there's a breakeven point or not.

wphamilton

Nope, I'm checking that on the treadmill and the cadence is the same from about 8:30 through 10 minute pace, the pace is already set of course so the stride length just depends strictly on pace.

How would you use that to figure which running style was more efficient? I can only tell by feel, and by how long I can keep the pace up. (without getting winded that is)

Carbonfiberboy 

It seems that it's personal. The video says ~105 (210) is about the limit. I'm trying to work my cadence up. One of the commenters on that video said that high cadence increased his HR. For sure that's true on the bike and probably in the run as well. So my thought is that cadence might well depend on VO2max, just like in cycling. And mine is crappy. Current top pros climb at about 100 and I'm doing well to climb at 82, which is up from the 78 I was using. So the fact that Chrissie turns over at 96 might not mean that we can.

So far, after 4 little 2.8 mile/200' runs, I'm doing a 4 hour marathon pace. Now hoping to get my HR down at that pace.

Carbonfiberboy 

Simply because of BMI. I'm down to ~24. As my BMI has dropped, my VAM hasn't changed much in the past 10 years. I call that success. BMI in the desirable range is also associated with longevity. I was #15 in this year's RAMROD and finished ~260th out of 850, first to finish with a number under 20. Bib numbers are in order of age. I screwed up my nutrition this year and hope to finish better next year. So I think I'm doing it right.

I was half-squatting 245 for 5 before I started full squatting a couple weeks ago so I'm not exactly ignoring strength, just allowing muscle mass to drop along with fat. I used to be decently fast on XC skis at a 21 BMI. I hope to be back down there in a few years without too much loss in strength. I do upper body weight work also.