again, 30km on the program today. I was sweating already by looking at it on the project white board. Right away the big one at the beginning of the week. This is not for low-hanging-fruit biz lingo juggler starbucks latte joggers, but rather the heavy duty construction workers type of runner (minus the beer bottle).
Headed from work over icy parkways to the beloved indoor sports arena. Added a 1km detour just to have one more km on the meter before continuing on the 400m track and thus reducing the laps from 55 to 52 and a half (yeeeeh).
A colleague from work promised to come by and do a couple of laps, that was nice of him, since there was no-one doing the same pace whom I could have joined. Running those laps alone is deadly boring. I preferred the indoor track simply because it’s faster to run on and the 30km take about 2:15h instead of 2:30h on those icy roads.
Petteri showed up, joined in, we did about 3km together, then his calf cramped and he had to stop. We should have taken it a bit easier, the 4:15 - 4:30min/km pace wasn’t such a good idea.
Later at km 20, went to the water tap next to the track and had a couple of gulps of water. When resuming on the track a stinging pain spread from the outside of the left knee. It forced me to start with a 6min pace and only over the course of about 1.5km I could come back to the normal training pace (4:20min/km). This repeated itself at another stop around 25km and the pain was felt albeit not much all the way back to the changing rooms at work. This got me really worrying. This Mondo track might not be a good track to run on longer distances after all. It’s now to choose between icy roads or a knee killing Mondo track…
today’s training: the long run 30km in 4:35min/km
Tags: esport arena, long run
It happened again today. The training target was 2 x 7km in 3:45min/km and already km 3 on the first one was beyond this limit. The following ones then just worse. Forced me on km 4 and barely got a 3:46min together, km 7 was then totally the end with a 3:54min. Quite annoyed by the unexpected low training results and with a hurting buttocks from the jumps on Friday I gave up. I didn’t even start after the 5 minutes rest period for the second 7k run. Instead did a slow 5km run with focus on running style and co-ordination.
Afterwards of course, second thoughts came creeping back. Shouldn’t it just have been pulled through, a second 7k, even if in 3:50 - 3:55min/km? At least there would have been some fighting spirit and a training effect.
today’s training: 4km warm-up, 7km race pace (3:47min/km), 5km with focus on style, 4,5km cool-down, 21km in total
Tags: giving up, interval training
… and others sure will like it, too! This one is simple if it weren’t for all the cutting stuff in preparation. But ingredients are basic and are found pretty much everywhere where this blog is read (tell me if I’m wrong here). The availability of ingredients is probably the biggest obstacle in transferring recipies from one country to another. Finding fresh spinach year around in Finland or a nordic variety of dairy products in central or western Europe, just doesn’t work. Anyway, this one works.
Ingredients (for 4 people, 250kcal/portion)
- 1 garlic clowe
- 1-2 red chili pepper
- 300g prawns or shrimps (use ready peeled prawns or shrimps to save a lot of time)
- 250g cherry tomatoes
- half a bunch of basil
- 5-7 table spoons of olive oil
- salt, vinegar
a lighter red wine, we had a Portugese “Quinta da Espiga”
Preparation
1) Peel the garlic clowe and cut it in thin slices and very small pieces. Wash the chili pepper and cut it as well very thinly
2) Wash the prawns or shrimps and cut the biggest pieces into smaller ones. Wash the tomatoes, too and cut them in quarter pieces. Finally cut the basil in fine pieces (see a hint for this here).
3) Prepare the pasta, linguine or fettuccine go well with it.
4) Heat up 4-5 table spoon of olive oil in a pan. Add the garlic and chili when hot and stew the mix for 2 minutes. Add tomatoes and continue for 1-2 minutes. Finally add the prawns or shrimps and the basil, keep stiring and let it heat up only while spicing it with salt, vinegar and some red wine.
5) Add one or two table spoons of olive oil when mixing the whole with the pasta.
Voilà, preparation takes 30 minutes, your loved ones will thank you all evening!
Today’s training: 11km warm up, co-ordination, strength, 8km cool down, 20km total distance
14 years ago I got a pair of racing shoes from Puma. Patrick or Pascal something, a French and German speaking sports director (or one of those guys who look after elite athletes in a company) gave them to me after I provided a couple of weeks of temporary housing for two of his Kenian runners, Laban Chege and his little brother. Man, was I proud, told everyone that Puma is “kind of sponsoring me”, that sounded really bold. Did a number of road races with them (the shoes I mean, not the Kenians) and they never let me down, such as in January in the third race of the Aktia Cup. With 240 grams they are quite light and I believe in the reduction weight around the outer extremities significantly improving the racing results. The muscles don’t get tired as quickly and the pace degredation is slower towards the end of the race.
However this old pair of Puma road racing shoes has one significant drawback, they become slippery on wet tarmac. The grip is immediately gone in drinking areas of longer runs or watery patches from melting snow. The red sole material was chosen for lighter weight but has this negative effect as well, that was the explanation I once got. Well, explanations usually don’t help in winning races, so something’s need to change - and it’s theshoes that will.
After googling racing shoes for 15-20 minutes I’m not much wiser. A lot of normal training shoes come up in all kinds of online shoe shops. Same on the big sports brand’ s web pages, checked Adidas and Puma. Big pictures and all focus on looks but little to no details regarding hard facts such as weight, marathon or 5k road race type of shoe (ok there might not be much of a difference). Any recommendations from you?
today’s training: rest, best friends of ours got their first baby girl yesterday night and we went to see it, our little princess made me run along the hospital corridors with her, was very tired when we arrived back home.
Tags: new shoes, race shoes
The 55 laps on the indoor running track got boring after about 10. So I joined the training session of another fellow, who was running approximately the same speed. That’s the advantage of going to the indoor track, you always meet people you can hook up with - well, running wise of course.
Jarkko, a SW engineer at F-Secure (=keeps your PC safe from viruses and all sorts of scum that creeps from the Internet down through our MBit DSL lines). Anyway, he’s quite a versatile runner, too. Everything from the 1500m to half marathon is on his calendar this year. And with the latter one in 1:15h, he’s looking at quite a decent challenge as well.
The fun with running together is that you can chit chat a bit. And the best, with the running pace you can adjust how much is said. Jarkko probably didn’t like what I had to say. He got me quite single worded as we approached a pace of 3:40 min/km. But he could still talk to me and gave me a couple of wake up calls. First, he let me in on the inner lane of the indoor track being just above 390m not 400m. So much about recent celebrations of extraordinary interval run series. The line between lane two and three equals a 400m lap. Secondly the training program with 100 - 120km weekly could be a bit on the lower end what’s required for a 2:29h marathon. Hm, he could be right there.
Fortunately we didn’t run more than 6km together. Those were enough truths for the day.
Today’s training: long run 30km in 4:22 min/km, partly indoors
Tags: long run, running company, truth
Just in time for “laskiainen” - the high season for children in Finland to take their plastic bob sleighs and other downhill capable gear to the snow covered slopes - we got our own EUR 5 “plastic tub” to let our little princess be part of the fun. Of course, we didn’t just put her in it and pushed her down the half pipe. We thought dragging her along in the near surroundings would be ok for a start.
Obviously, as we were standing outside after a half an hour dressing routine which we needed for double layer overalls, double gloves, double hats, double socks, etc. (”Daddy, remember the right dressing order!” Of course he didn’t), the littel princess had no intention to sit in the bob sleigh. Hence the princess’ mummy, aka. the queen, had to sit in as well. And yes, daddy was to look after the kinetic energy, i.e. drag the whole lot. Off we went, from the house through the little park, onto the frozen Vanhankaupunginlahti bay in the eastern part of Helsinki. Daddy running in the front and the girls satisfied sitting behind. This scenario definintely reminded of sprint training where the athletes drag a tire of other weights behind them while practising explosive starts and accelerations. With dragging the better part of the family over half the bay we surely can add a 50% addition in the training calendar today!
In the middle of the bay there’s a small island with a ice-roundabout. A sledge at the end of a long beam that in turn is mounted on top of a vertical pole, which keeps the apparatus fixed. Guess, how this thing works? Exactly, by daddy pushing at the short end of the beam…
On the way back we tested mummy’s strengths and the little princess sat on my lap in the bob sleigh. 
Today’s training: 4km warm-up, 10km in 37:15min on the indoor track, 5km cool down + this one
Tags: bob sleigh, little one, winter training
Met this orienteering runner today in the Esport Areena. He wasn’t quite in his natural habitat but overtook me in such a pace that I had to ask him what he was up to. 6 x 1000m he replied. Well, ok, no surprise, that he swooshed by as I was doing my odd basic 20k run and chose the indoor arena over the snowy and icy walk ways outside (yes, one could claim, that I’m not one of the toughest). He said he’d have two more runs left, both in about 3:20min. That spurred my interest in a small challenge.
Orienteering runners are different from long distance road/track runners in that way, that they’re much stronger, they have more muscles. They need the ability to accelerate, suddenly slow down and quickly change direction all on uneven terrain. Road and track runners develop co-ordination and a rythm that brings efficiency in maintaining a high constant pace over a given distance.
We agreed that I’d join in on the last two runs. Running together is just so much more fun. And I’ve needed something spicing up my basic run anyway. He started out really fast, the first 400m in 1:15min which would lead to a sub-3:10min. I took the lead on the second lap. This way we maintained a good pace and came in at 3:12min on the 1000m. Really decent! The second one was equally fast, only that he even increased the speed in the beginning, the first 200m in 33sec, a 2:45min pace. Crazy guy.
Today’s training: basic run 20.2km, 4:40min/km pace with 2×1000m in 3:12min
Tags: challenges, orienteering
… everything works a little bit better. It also might had to do with the reduced baggage, at least during warm-up and cool down. Normally we’re running with two heart rate systems, the Polar and the Nokia one, and have two pairs of shoes with us to switch when coming in from the outdoor warm-up and going on the indoor track. But today the handset battery was flat and it was dry outside so we decided to reduce the gear load somewhat. A liberating feeling right from the start. Can’t wait for the temperatures to go up - still almost -10 degrees Celsius in the evenings - to reduce clothing layers as well.
At the indoor arena, the majority of people are normally somewhat slower and are more obstacle than stimulus. But not today, ample of faster running folk there. I got so enthusiastic by it that I dared to make contact and speak to those strangers, something that rarely happens around here. I guess I outed me as outlandish.
The all in black dressed girl ran 2×2000m and 2×1000m in a 4 minute pace, another guy said to run 8-9 laps (400m) I guess in a 3:40 to 3:45min/km pace and then the guy in the ice-hockey-like shirt who had coins in his pockets and we could hear him getting closer from behind. Must have been 500m runs or so. Thought to ask him what he did, but when I passed him later during a rest period, he just gleared out of the window while stretching and didn’t turn his head although I came close by. Doing our own thing is what we’re quite good at here in Finland…
Plenty of reasons to keep up the pace today, seemed to have worked.
Tags: interval training
Nokia launched a Bluetooth stereo headset today in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress (MWC). The so called BH-214 is a stereo headset with in-ear plugs that come in three sizes. And with the soft silicon ear pieces the headset appears suitable for taking it out and bouncing around in the streets (no no, no parkour in my age anymore, it’s about plain old running, flat out, steady and fast). Here the fact sheet.
The advantage with a Bluetooth headset is of course no fiddling around with cables going to the handset. The disadvantage, you need to remember charging it. But standby times of beyond 10 days and music/talk times of 7-8 hours help here to not run out of juice too quickly, however it’s easier to forget charging 
.
The big question of course, can you run with it?
To say it upfront, Yes you can!
First thing you notice the difference is when putting the gear on, no stowing away the excess cable. And putting in/taking out the handset from the pouch is not messing with the cable. Second big plus is operating the music player from a large 4-way button. No need to take the focus away from running. And thirdly, the sound quality. It doesn’t beat your Sennheisers, but it’s way better than the cable headsets that come in the box of your handset. It’s like comparing your grandma’s radio with a Bose Sound system (ok, slightly exaggerated, I admit). And something really cool, if you’re into wearing your Sennheisers while running out in the streets (gives a lot of street cred!), you just plug them into the 3,5mm jack that sits in the Bluetooth module.
The earpieces have the same soft silicon lip that comes with the Nokia N79 Active package, comes here in three sizes as well. They fit nicely into the ear and don’t fall out easily. Further they close out noises in the surroundings pretty well. You hear more of your own breathing than another runner saying hello. Perfect for all ego-trips. You can really focus on the music. One recommendation though, open your eyes when running in traffic.
Tags: Bluetooth, headset, Nokia, Nokia BH-214
Let’s do something new, I thought right before going out to do the long run. Of course, that was the most vulnerable moment for such a distraction. The moments between the desk at work and the changing room. The direction towards the car is quite the same, it’s very easy to accidentially miss the door to the changing room and just walk straight out to the car park and drive home. That happened today.
Let’s try something new. We had now 5 weeks in a row with a total of 509km. The heart rate at similar running pace is clearly dropping all the time. It’s hard to get it going beyond 175 anymore. So let’s try to take a slow week now, with just 3-4 sessions, 50 - 60km in total. And then have another hard 5 weeks towards Rotterdam.
It feels awkward to arrive home while there’s still light outside. Well, spring is coming fast, the sun goes down at 5:12pm right now, it’ll be around 6pm in 10 days.
The shopping tour with the little princess instead was spirit lifting anyways. She likes the car shaped trolleys, where she can sit in and grap the steering wheel. On the way to the mall we hit the horn to greet a friend. In the shopping mall she imitated that and made sure everyone knew she was around.
Sometimes shopping is more fun than running.
