Through Germany on day 5+6+7
Arrival in Travemünde on Friday June, 26 at 7:00 am. It’s another 650km in Germany from the “Skandinavienkai”, the ferry harbour in Travemünde all the way down to Ansbach, a 40.000 souls small town, about 50km west of Nuremburg. The main differences to cycling in Sweden are a better quality road surface - less rolling resistance - and better bakery goods along the way. Also more traffic, especially in the north with long stretches on major through roads, it can be a bit of a drag. But one major support could be the wind in our back right away from the coast and due to the flat landscape it might carry us 100 - 150km inlands. On day 5, we should get to Brunsvik or Seesen, around 250-290km. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: bike tour
Through Sweden on day 2+3+4
It’s roughly 650km through southern Sweden from Stockholm to Trelleborg. I’m not sure at this point whether it’ll take us 3 days or it would be possible to ride the whole distance in two. If we’d try in 2 day, it would be probably a hell of a ride, 300+km per day… this should still be holidays, relaxation from work n’all.
Let’s say, we do it in 3 days. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: bike tour
The English head down to Spain for summer. The Germans go there as well and eat up all the breakfast because they get up earlier. Or they stay home and enjoy balconia. The Swedes travel their country with a trailer or a camper and move from camping site to camping site. The Finns head out to their summer cottages on a lake front and put up a good fight against the mosquitos. But Stefano and me we come up with something different this year. We think it’s so cozy and comfy on our bikes that we can ride them all the way down from Finland to Germany. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: bike tour
The day job has been requiring more resources than it was budgeted for. Both major other stakeholders, the family and the running project - including blogging - suffered badly from the additional second shifts. Fortunatly, feedback provided by the former other stakeholder, fell in its timing together with the last deadlines and deliveries. Hence quick improvements could be implemented already. An afternoon at the zoo and three consecutive days of good running this week. Things are getting back in balance.
At a first run after a break, it’s always easy to be over enthusiastic. I was hovering along at a relaxed pace of about 4:20 to 4:30min/km. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: fast run
We love competitions in Finland. In no other country - as far as I have observed - are held so many national championships than in this little nordic place. The trick is to invite someone from Estonia or Sweden to lift it to a European Championship event. And if someone from Russia, east of Moscova could come around we have a full blown world championships.
That there are the traditional annual events in the throwing disciplines like rubber boots or mobile phones has already widely spread. And given the relatively young history in the 1800’s where a lot in Finland still was based on farming and hunting, it’s no surprise that the world best Javelin throwers are from around here and all the other almost best ones want to diversify the throwing business to be world best in something as well.
Further we enjoy comparing who’s best at sitting in the sauna, i.e. who can be in there the longest. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: 10k race, mobile phone, rubber boot, sauna, world championships
At larger races there are other event organizers distributing leaflets and infos on their happening. Whereas in the majority of cases the organizing people stand nicely behind their tables full of info sheets and color full material, this guy stood in the middle of the walking corridor through which all 10.700 starting Helsinki City Run were directed to go after having picked up their starting number. He made sure with a broad smile that you got their flyer. Direct marketing at its best. Of course a tough guy marketing the Tough Guy Run 2009. He must be good.
Click on the picture above to have a sharp look at the event description. This is for tough guys only, heavy drinking on the road recommended, then you might be able to finish! After all this drinking you might think it’ll be hard to find the finish, but no worries you can’t miss at this event. Even after 9km of contraries and 110% experiences. Go for it Tiger!
Sunday June 14 at 1pm, for more details go to www.stamina.ee (ask your Estonian friend help you).
today’s training: fartlek 1-2-3-4-3-2-1 min, altogether 13,7km
Tags: Estonia, race, Tough Guy Run
Today’s company occupational health event featured some fitness tests, a walking test and the traditional Cooper Test, and three to four measuring points for various body health related checks. By far the best one was a body composition analyzer. You stand on it’s metal area surfaces as if it would be some scales and it measures an electrical current going through you. (For the electrical engineers among you, it actually measures the impediance, mine was 411 Ohm)
Anyway, the results were hilarious. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: body composition, fat burning
A great running event and by now the largest in Finland that brings the atmosphere of the bigger European running events to Helsinki. Start and Finish at and in the Olympic Stadium of 1952 is the right frame for this happening. For it being a half marathon it’s definitely not an easy run. Partly for the Finnish spring weather has always a surpise in store. This time a cool (8-9 degrees C), windy and rainy one-day package in a period of 2-3 weeks of warmer than averge sunny and dry spring weather. Guess which day the weather god chose. He doesn’t like runners, that’s for sure. Read the rest of this entry »
From various armband inquiries are trickling in, at work, people are calling and here on the blog. An armband is a quite handy way to carry your mobile device with you when being out running, tracking your run, listening to music or taking pictures. It provides a tight pocket in which the mobile isn’t bouncing around, is well attached to the body and the soft material provides some padding to protect both runner and device. With the diffferent shapes, sizes and interfaces of mobile devices, the following hints here, could be of some help for you. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: armband
2911km to be exact are behind in this 400days project. What did we learn from almost 3000km? We’re not as good as we’d like to be and it takes quite some time to become a little bit better. Running in warm and sunny weather is much nicer than in a horizontal snow storm. But running is really damn efficient, an hour out there and it feels much better on the couch again. In brief, we’re not much wiser than before, because this much we knew before.
Behind are also a first marathon, in Rotterdam, and a number of 10 k runs mainly the Aktia Cup winter running series. The race results so far - 35:34 on the 10k and 2:49h on the full marathon distance - form a good base line to build upon. It’s been winter for the majority of kilometers and that’s the good news, the rest of the kilometers will be during the summer time! The masterplan foresees now a 9 week period of less km, but higher running pace until the bike tour and the preparation for the main event, the Berlin Marathon in September.
