that’s how it turns out sometimes. I was running my recovery run, slow pace, good music in my ears - “Rock Star” of Ronn Chick, Dennis Winslow. Suddenly a swoosh from behind on my right side. I just spat that way and the guy might have run into it… I apologized.I noticed the black and yellow shoe colors, that’s this years Adidas coloring and the way this guy paces along, he’s up to something. Wanted to find out and accelerated.
After the roads forked and came together again, whereby I chose the shorter alternative, I got him again. I guess he was a bit surprised when being asked all those questons by a total stranger. But after a while it became more of a conversation than this initial question and anwer game.
Matti, as it turns out is studying at the Helsinki University of Technology in Otaniemi, Espoo and he’s on a marathon mission as well. Helsinki City Marathon and Vantaa Marathon and one of them in below 2:40h - not bad - and he made me feel that, tool. We sped along on the northern shoreline of Laajalahti in a 3:50min/km pace. With our route going up and down, left and right, it was a constant acceleration, deceleration game - a fartlek in it’s purest form. Matti doesn’t train in the afternoons, it’s the evening hours for him, he doesn’t overdo it either, with somewhere around 90km a week he reached his personal best of 2:41h last year. There’s still plenty of room for improvement for this young fellow.
My recommendations, Matti, keep it cool. Look after your speed capabilities with short (400m and 1000m) interval runs every now and then and change your race plans from Helsinki and Vantaa to Stockholm and Berlin Marathons (both places cheap to get to from Helsinki) and you might even shoot for a sub-2:35h this year.
today’s training: 6km slow, 6km fartlek, 2,5km slow, 14,5km altogether, route on the map, hr and what not
Tags: meeting people
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