I posted a challenge to do 100 runs over the winter…people could do it at their pace. We have athletes from all over the world participating in an effort lay down a nice base for next year.
After 33 days, here are some stats: There are 185 athletes who have taken the thing on…most are active, some no longer 4175 individual running sessions have been logged 3133 hours have collectively been run by the group 32,244 K have been collectively run (by those that have submitted mileage data) 64 athletes are on Platinum (one run per day) or Gold pace (10 runs per 11 days), which equates to more than one third of the group Train has put down the most number of runs with 47, Amy Mark has the most minutes with 2870, and Colin Ferguson has the most distance with 516K. Finally the speediest runner is CPTChaos who has run 376K this month pretty well at 4 min per Kilometer speed.
You can read the most current progress here:
Thanks for setting this up and providing the spreadsheets. It’s really nice to see the sorts and compare what you’re doing to others. It’s especially comforting to know that others are putting in true aerobic base miles and not worrying about their pace. It’s really easy to get caught up with charts and how you stack up, but what they showed me is that I probably started off running too fast of a pace (even though I’m still slow) for too much of my running. I’m trying to focus more on building an aerobic base with this and a lot of my early runs were more like tempo runs. I’m trying for more of breakdown of 1 day easy and longer, 3 days pure aerobic, and 1-2 days tempo for the rest of the challenge. I’m still anticipating my average time dropping over the challenge, but because I’m getting fitter, not because I’m going harder. Thanks again and have fun everyone.
I see lots of the guys that put down 1:20-1:28 half ironman run splits or 3:2x Ironman run splits averaging between 4:40 and 5 min per K. I also see some people who can’t break 40 min for 10K trying to run under 5 min per K pace for every run…the former group have the right idea.
An amazing transformation is taking place. I’m starting to find the love of running once again after feeling lost for the better part of 3 years. I got sucked too much into the cycling culture. Sure, I still ran, but swung way too much into the cycling gig where I never had the legs to run and still like it as much as I once did.
All these base building runs (and the consistency of it all) has lessened the hours on the bike (a good thing for me) and I’m starting to find that balance with the “don’t do anything today that will take you out of training tomorrow” philosophy. The mileage is starting to increase as the legs get more solid.
I’m with you…I’ve only been running 6 days per weeks…so its 27 runs into this and I feel better than day 1. Sure, there are days when I have some lingering soreness, typically after a long run…but even this is far less than when I was running 3-4 days per week. Overall, my legs feel stronger than ever. Recovery is improved. I’m running faster, with less effort.
What’s this about no love for the bike? This is ST…its all about the bike…100/100 is just a brief side tour to the dark world of running until we can get back to doing a real sport where real men are men, and their studliness is measured by their power numbers, saddle to aeropad drop and their position coming into T2, which as far as ST is concerned, is the only finish line that really really counts
By the way, when you start piling on the riding, the frequency of the runs stays up at 5-7 times a week…just add the biking…yes the run volume might decline a bit, but ideally not at all. Now that we’re used to finding 30-40 min slots to cram runs into our days, there is no excuse for dropping them when biking ramps
By the way if you look at the following:
4175 individual running sessions have been logged 3133 hours have collectively been run by the group
Then you see that th length of the average run is: (3133/4175)*60 = 45 minutes!
Acknowledged! Yep. There will be a bit of trial and error with re-piling on the bike mileage but I do know one thing — I’m not going to compromise the running like I did before. Then, as drdivot mentioned, I’ll have to squeeze in the swimming sooner or later…
Don’t tell me about squeezing swimming in…I’ve been totally slack in Dec with only 12000m or so. I need to clamp down and get in the pool this month! I’m pretty good starting in April about swimming when I can ride to the pool…I hate wasting time driving to workouts, so winter swimming gets pushed to the back burner!
Most probably wouldn’t expect an ex-swimmer to say this but…I don’t think swimming matters that much unless you are a top pro. Does it really matter if you are 10 minutes slower in a IM swim as a result of a lack of swim training if it means you are 45 minutes+ faster with the bike-run? My plan is just to train enough in the pool to keep the swim time under an hour - any faster than this would be a waste of valuable training time.
excuse me-I didn’t know that I should be posting to the spreadsheet. I have continued to run each day except 1. will note it. thanks again for reminding me.
Adding to Dev’s stats, here is the breakdown of the total hours run by age group:
Notice that the “older and wiser” males seem to be putting in a lot more
average hours of running compared to the “testosterone poisoned” young
stud set. Why, on closer inspection, even the girls are beating them!
The young stud set is doing this to build a base by repeated slow, easy, short runs. Total hours and distance were never part of the original goal - building a base over an extended period of time that allows for longer and faster workouts early season is the goal. The distances some of you old farts are running in the series of days you guys are running them would kill me. My hat is off…
Train, you do realize that it is perfectly acceptable to actually run “more than 30 minutes” in a session :-). The only reason for the 30 minutes minimum is to make each run of a substantial duration, while keeping it short enough that it can fit into the constraints of day to day life, such that the excuse of “I had no time” is no longer an excuse. If you have more than say “40 minutes to run and shower”, feel free to run longer than 30 minutes…there are fitness benefits to running longer too, however, what you are doing appears to be working, so if it is, keep on chugging away! Seriously though, after a month of exclusively 30 minute runs, you are ready to add 3x per week at 45 minutes and keep the rest at the bare minimum. Looks like you are adapting quite well to the load.
No one says that you can’t run faster or longer over the course of three months…heck, its a long time, people should have some variety, however, the overall goal is to build base through frequency, so the saying, “Don’t do anything today that takes you out of tomorrow’s workout”, still applies.
