Quite a busy morning with calling and arranging all kinds of appointments with docs and orthopedists. Yesterday’s injury brought some “mental imbalances”. Was a bit worried with the left leg/hip hurting on every step. After three times trying to reach Jouko, the orthopedist I got recommended by the local athletics club, I got an appointment with the doc at work first thing Friday, tomorrow morning. But he’s a generalist and would normally just refer me to a specialist. Hence I called a private orthopedist myself as well and got an appointment at 13:30 for Friday as well. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: berlin-marathon
shit! that wasn’t the way I pictured the preparation in the last 10 days for the Berlin Marathon. The hip started to hurt. More precisely the area where the leg is attached to the hip started to hurt, in the picture to the left marked as “Bänderschraube des Hüftgelenks”. I came up last week and became painful over the weekend after 35km of running altogether (divided over three runs). The expectation was that after two days of rest it would go over, but it didn’t.
Planned a last test for today, Yasso 800’s (10 x 800m intervals), since I couldn’t go to any good race lately. The yasso’s would provide some indication on where we are right now and for Berlin. The first two runs were phenomenal (2:32min), in run three, although the time was still great (2:33min) the left side of the hip started to hurt pretty badly after 600m. Continued, despite it, but run four went only 400m, then I had to give in.
Need to see a doc and tried to contact an orthopedist in the evening, hope to get hold of him tomorrow. This needs to be sorted out asap. Hope it’s nothing that prevents me from running.
Tags: berlin-marathon, yasso 800s
Only 85km this week and one and a half tough training sessions. The training runs are run. After 4272km during this whole project up to now, and 1040km in the last 10 weeks, there’s not much more you can win by chiping in extra efforts - perhaps another 30 or 40km more in the last weeks prior to the race. On the contrary, it’s time to slow down and rest. Let the competition shape come up through resting and focus on tuning the psychological aspects. Those are not to underestimate with a marathon. In addition FDH (= Friss die Hälfte, eat half the amount ) and SDD (= Schlaf das doppelte, sleep twice as much) should help to push the kilos down and keep the immune system up.
today’s training: 10.5 km boring run in the rain
Tags: weekly summary
The best things in life are when a chain of co-incidences lead to something cool. So it happened this week.
As previously mentioned, I’m down in the south, i.e. in Stuttgart, southern Germany for some days. Of course are the running shoes an integral part of the travelling equipment. It’s week 3 in the count down to the Berlin Marathon and some training on the track would fit well into the program - as it did in every week up to now. So let’s find a track. What better tools are there as online maps with a satellite view. Fire up the web browser and as European I enter “maps.ovi.com” (you can also use the other one from the west coast, should work equally well). Scanning the area for something that looks like a 400m track, it feels like being a spy. There it is, about 5km west of the Stuttgart Airport, where my hotel is located. The track is in a little place called Leinfelden. Read the rest of this entry »
Yes of course. They do have paved streets and walkways there as well and actually training can be very efficient since often you need to get out of the Neckar valley and that means going uphill for more than 15 minutes without a break. It meant for me climbing up 140m in altitude, that drove up the heart rate to 85% of HRmax.
Something that’s quite scarce in the region is space. The streets are relatively narrow especially when cars are parked on both sides. Walkways are sometimes so narrow that two meeting people need to draw aside from each other. As runner it’s then easier to mingle with the cars in the streets. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Stuttgart
Although there should have been another two weeks of hard training, it’ll be only one, the one that’s gone. He, he, that’s always the better one to choose 
. It feels like that lighter running in the rest of the time after 7 to 8 weeks of tough training will let the form curve go north east. Form and fitness always kick-in after periods of rest or lighter training.
The 104km this week consist of an ugly 4×2000m “short” interval session - everything beyond 1200m is just torture - some 14 - 16km lighter runs, a long interval session (7,5km + 1,8km + 1,8km, those are slower of course than the short ones) and a 2 hour long run.
Btw. all in all we’re closing in on the 4200km in this project, quite some distance.
Today’s training: long run 28.5km in 2:05h
Tags: berlin-marathon
In the beginning of August the Berlin Marathon starting confirmation was sent out by email. Since the SCC, the organizer, sent out earlier commercial emails, as ads for products and services sponsoring the event, the email almost was victim to a quick Shift+DEL move. Fortunately the attachement with the interesting file name 24873.pdf was so pronounced and visible in the Thunderbird email application, that the fingers hesitated for a couple of seconds that made all difference.
Reading through the email in more detail and opening the attachment revealed that 24873 is the starting number assigned to me in the Berlin Marathon. With 40.000 runners on the starting line - haven’t yet figured out if there are 40.000 runners alone or starters all in all, i.e. counting in all skaters and “power” walkers (one could see here a paradox in the latter term as such). Anyway, the starting number 24873 is easily understood to be in the latter half of the starting field. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: berlin-marathon
It actually was yesterday, but was almost tempted to do the same trick again. Namely to pull the “no running today” card. It’s a new element in my training. Once a week, if the weather is bad, if work’s too much, if the flesh is weak (although the mind reminds of the weekly km goal) or there’s just general dislike to go out for a run, there’s the option to draw the red card. It’s only allowed once a week, not twice or so.
It was difficult today not to pull it again. The weather still grey and rainy and the massage in the morning made the legs heavy as lead. Normally I’d go for a massage in the evening after the training, but the local massage school (urheiluhierontaopisto) is constantly booked out in the evenings. Currently one would need to book 3 weeks in advance to get a time after work and training. No way to plan that far ahead.
Still can reach 120km this week, which was kind of the implied level, it’s gonna be a little tough for the last three days. Somehow 74km would need to fit into those. Hm best to go to sleep right away, can need any rest now that’s available…
Tags: no running
Tags: Midnattsloppet
One tough week done of the last three harder training weeks before the Berlin Marathon. 120km in 7 training sessions. The weekly training is structured in a way that repeats itself quite often in all those marathon preparation weeks. In the beginning there’s a faster interval session with runs up to 2000m. Thereafter and in the middle of the week basic runs and the long run, more than 25km, should be above 2 hours, but sometimes I’m lazy and it isn’t. Towards the end of the week the second interval session with longer runs, such as 2 x 5 km or so. A thumb-rule is to train at least 20km per week at or above race pace. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: weekly summary
