UKH

I've putting into practice the advice I got here recently re. learning to sprint again in middle age. Already I've seen improvement in pace. Maybe by mid year I can sprint again 🙂

So I came back from a particularly good run yesterday, pushing the VO² max, lengthening stride and burning a ton of calories. Back at the house: a litre of water, then a mug of tea and lump of Christmas cake.

Then I got to wondering how long after taking on calories will they be turned to fat if not used up... Google told me only four hours !!!! Yikes !

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year !

Change your username? Something like MisterGazelle might just give you the extra edge.

4 hours!?? I always assumed I was kicking the problem into the long grass when munching on a bacon sandwich or a cake but this fact is just alarming! And timely. Happy New Year.

Is this a "fact" ?

When I was running regularly, I'd first have a good sized meal at lunchtime, then after work (5 to 6 hours later, dependent) I''d do my run, then have a sit down for a few minutes, then get showered and changed, then - and only then - cook my evening meal - and it was a decent sized one.

I kept my weight at 9 stone in summer (9 and a half in Winter when I was doing more weight training), and I basically didn't have an ounce of fat anywhere. (Note - I was running middle distance at National Championship level). Rarely did I eat within 4 hours before running to ensure I didn't get stomach problems.

If my food was turning into fat then according to "google" I should have been a right fatso. It does seem to be a "questionable" "fact".

I'm no scientist so contented myself with accepting the conclusions of science journalists who reported on the study on weight gain when it came out in 2012.

Fred, perhaps you can follow their study, in which case I found this link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22298655/

It's windy outside and it chuckin' it down; but there is a last chunk of Christmas cheer to finish, so I guess that another 200g of cake tucked under my waist band 😂

I'm no scientist either. My father (who is more sciencey than myself) explained weight gain to me in layman's terms once. Pointing to each end of the digestive tract, he explained how "this hole (pointing at mouth) is bigger than this hole (pointing towards #rse).

I'm convinced there's more to it than this, though!..

I looked that link up and here's an extract;

"........ observations support the idea that physically active people have relatively low fat mass, and intervention studies tend to show that exercise training reduces fat mass."

So people who are active aren't fat, all I can say is - "No shit, sherlock".

Wonder how much time and money was expended to find that out ??

If he could also correctly identify his elbow, he may have more knowledge than myself or much of the "facts" found via on Google 

Yeah, what good has ever come from asking how things work (which was what their actual question and findings were about)? 🙄

How do you sprint without getting injured?

I did a lot of "running" last year, long and slow on hilly stuff. To explain how slow 30km would take me four hours.

If I ever tried to add any sprints to my week I started developing injuries. Shins for example.

Some questions that come to mind are a) did you gradually build in faster training or just go straight from all your training being long and slow to throwing all out sprints in and b) did you decrease your overall volume/mileage to account for the harder speed workouts c) did you adapt the rest of your week's running to allow some additional rest time if adding in sprints to your usual routine d) in my understanding sprints can be considered analogous to strength work in many ways, so you are best off ending the workout while you still feel able to do more rather than going to exhaustion/failure e) if all your running was in the hills, did you spend time some running your usual workouts on roads before starting to add sprints to let your body adapt to the difference in surface/style (assuming the sprints were on roads)?

Basically, the likely culprit to my mind is that something was changed too fast for your body to cope with it.

I would say I built it up gradually, until I hit a point where the body said no. 

Ah, no.

Usual routine

I would say I didn't go until failure. I was still building up when my body started getting angry.

I did not do flat stuff to account for sprinting.

I think the issue was I was trying to train for a marathon so wanted to keep my weekly miles high. I think this year (didn't do the marathon in the end as I had this stupid chest cough thing for about 3 months) I might stick to the slow stuff, and then maybe the following year, if I'm not aiming for high weekly mileage I can try the sprints again.

You wouldn't necessarily have to drop the mileage loads, and obviously you can then build the mileage back up, but in the short term adding harder workouts is best traded off against a reduction in mileage so that there isn't a sudden jump in the overall intensity of your routine (not sure if there are simple guidelines for doing this, but the usual advice not to increase mileage by more than ~10% each week assumes that you aren't simultaneously increasing the relative intensity of those workouts too much).

That said, I've tended to do the same and postpone building in much more intense workouts if there is a time pressure for increasing mileage. Otherwise I've ended up in the same boat as you and just gotten injured by trying to do it all at the same time.

One thing you could maybe add in as prep for starting more speed work the following year is "strides". 10-15 second accelerations at between 5k to 1 mile race pace; add in 2 or 3 of these spaced out during one of your easier weekly runs. Should feel like a "quick but fun" pace and not an all out sprint, and you should be able to recover while continuing at easy run pace. Starts to get your body used to recruiting fast-twitch muscle fibres for faster workouts without adding very much in the way of intensity or impact. N=1 but I've not picked up injuries from adding these in and I'm fairly prone to plantar fasciitis and shin pain (I suspect since I peeled back a large section of one shin to the bone a few years back and then got it infected by going on a climbing/camping holiday the week after with the stitches still in, so it's now just a mess of scar tissue which can't be good for injury resilience!)

I can be a bit like a dog with a bone so I'm prone to be unwilling to sacrifice my mileage for another goal, so I'm probably best having one goal at a time, but I do like the idea of the 10-15 second accelerations to keep the fast twitch muscles somewhat aware of their existence.

Something that did work for me was hill sprints. This may seem counter intuitive, but I think it exhausted me so quickly (as in heart and breathing) that i didn't have the time to develop an injury from it. It's almost self regulating so might try doing that again this year.

Same, but believe it or not, I suffered more from plantar fasciitis in my 20's and early 30's when I didn't do any running at all. The strength gains form running (whilst a bit touch and go initially) ended up improving my arches. The shin thing was new however, swapping one problem for another I guess. I'm guessing it's all related.

Wow. I'll probably regret this but do tell more.

Yeah that sounds familiar!

I think that makes sense - the exertion and effort is there but the slower absolute speed and impact forces make it a bit kinder on some parts of the musculo-skeletal system. I guess previous running history probably has a role in whether hill sprints are more or less of an injury risk than flat sprints.

Embarrassing tale of very bad decision making at the end of the day. Decided to do one last easy route after a good day's sport climbing since it meant I'd have ticked everything at that crag. Lower off bolts were a little wobbly and had spooked my partner a bit. The sensible conclusion would have been "they held my heavier partner fine so let's just hand tighten them as best as possible and lower away with a little care". The route was only short and ended at a ledge system, so instead my tired and probably quite dehydrated brain decided it was better to reach down and collect the draw beneath me, walk along the ledge system to get off, and then get the last clips from the ground. The crag is quarried limestone and very loose away from the few established routes and I didn't get very far along the ledges before something slipped or broke under me and I fell off.

No memory of hitting the floor but ended up lying among boulders with probably a 3x2 inch section of my shin bone on clear display. Not much blood flow down there so had plenty of time to marvel at how white the bone was until someone else at the crag felt too queasy and plonked a roll of loo roll on it "in case it starts spurting". Narrowly avoided a skin graft and it got stitched up (by some poor shaking first year doctor who looked more distressed by it than me and kept having to go out for a break between each stitch). Was booked to fly to Spain the week after and decided to go anyway. Put a tubifast bandage over it to keep some of the dust out while climbing but we were camping under the crag so I couldn't really wash it and it got infected soon after. Was a good trip though, only dropped a + grade really and I think I managed a new hardest onsight. This was probably coming on 10 years ago and there is still a noticeable depression under the scar so I guess the underlying connective tissue has never really healed back properly.

Hill sprints move the load even more towards the toe, and sprints are pretty much that way anyway, so it might increase the load on Achilles. 

If nothing else it's an exciting way to injure yourself. I find my injuries come from really mundane things. Broke my foot a few years ago slipping on something in the garage. 

Hi Montyjohn, maybe the word 'sprint' is where I'm tripping up ? I was pondering on this yesterday, and to my mind (sans Google) 'sprint' is accelerating until I stop. As a youngster I never won any 100m races at school/uni, but almost always won my 200/400/800 races. I didn't accelerate quickly, but I could speed up pretty well and keep it going for longer than my competitors - a kind of elongated sprint, if you will. I'd be striving to increase speed/lengthen stride/increase cadence all the way to the tape.

40 years later, it's kind of the same thing I have in mind. I haven't yet 'sprinted' in the way I used to, not in 20+ years, and not now. I tried a while back (hence my question to the forum) and just couldn't, feeling held back.

I took on board the thoughts of UKCers and for the time being am concentrating on form, on lengthening stride, increasing cadence thereby upping the speed. This doesn't happen until about 4k into the run, and only on the flat, clean sections of the forest. The 'sprinting' will be in a few months when I've dialled in the other aspects; and then it'll be from a standstill, and when well warmed .The extra efforts I make currently are from a rolling start.

The sprint-iest part of my current run comes in the last third when I attack a steep hill, maybe 80m in length, and I suppose around 30-40°; mostly packed earth and small rocks. By this time, my legs are well warmed up. From a rolling start, I run up that sucker as fast as I can: short strides; high cadence and trying to carefully place my feet - not on the rocks which roll - concentrating on pushing off from a 'placed' foot rather than stomping down and rebounding forward. I usually run with heels striking first, but on this hill, I'm either flat footed or on the forefoot. And I hold the maximum effort until either the hill runs out or my thighs do. Today's attempt wasn't great cos kicked a loose rock halfway and killed my momentum; not enough in the tank to restart the effort - just a fast walk to the top. When I manage the whole hill, I'm wrung out at the top and my heart feels like it's gonna explode. But I've never felt any twinges in my legs. Perhaps due to being very well warmed up?

Anyhow, being old and flabby, I'm taking it easy, building up my runs in length and number of inclines, while concentrating on form and building the muscles needed to really go for it later in the year.

I've done a lot of reading over the past months about aging and physical performance and it's frankly scary how quickly one deteriorates. Remembering how fast I used to run isn't going to do any good at all - I have to go out and actually do it. 'Cos if I don't, the future is going be way more difficult than it needs to be. As one respondent said: Use it or lose it. How true !!!

It was that, but it’s always a bit embarrassing admitting that I managed to have a ground fall off of a sport route, never mind one that was a full number grade below my limit at the time.

My wife excels at picking up astonishingly serious injuries from utterly mundane tasks. I go in for occasional but dramatic with a healthy dose of “you’re lucky it wasn’t much worse”. 

What's interesting is as we age we tend to do less and less. I get the impression that a significant proportion over 50 (outside of UKC) don't do any exercise at all. 

The current thinking is that in age it becomes even more important to do regular exercise. I don't think you need to do so much that you're breaking yourself down, but just do something.

If your goals require you to do more i guess that's even better.

I'm late thirties and always enjoyed climbing and walks, but avoided runs like the plague. I just hated doing them. For me it was because I tried to run too fast, ran out of puff after a short distance, and didn't see any obvious gains. What I then discovered is that if I just slow right down I can do some great distances, actually enjoy it and found that my performance steadily improved.

So I'm quite enjoying the slow runs at the moment (although I lost a lot of fitness over the Autumn and winter due to health so have a lot of catching up to do).