Run, Koper, run

Last week... This is the last week before the marathon. On Monday I did last serious training: 10x 1K intervals with 1K of jogging in-between. My pace is muuuch slower than it should be (4:19 min/km). I cannot even blame it on Ithaca's hills as I chose the route in such a way that I do the intervals mostly downhill (and make up for it going uphill in the jogging breaks). Oh well. I take Tuesday off. On Wednesday I catch a cold. Wonderful timing. I wonder whether to cancel remaining trainings of the week. If I knew it would help me with recovery I would do it right away, but it's not that simple with a cold -- sometimes sweating it out actually helps. I go for an easy run. It goes terribly. I go again on Thursday. Bit better. But not much. At least the weather is wonderful... Big picture I started preparing for this marathon at the beginning of the year. That means I had 17 weeks of preparation. Not too much. But this time I put my bet on regularity. My best weekly mileage w...

That was supposed to be the heaviest week of preparation, starting off with a 30K run, but I missed one training so I ended up with an average weekly total. 16 18 Apr - 24 Apr This week's totals: 4x, 7:18, 76km [7:18] Next week's plans: 4x, 7:15, 82km 2:58 1:12 1:26 1:42 30.2 km 13.0 km 16.1 km 16.6 km '30': ER 18km+SR 10km ER 12km SR 16km ER 16km 146 hrm 143 hrm 148 hrm 133 hrm 5:46 min/km 5:18 min/km 5:05 min/km 6:00 min/km I started this week with the last long & tough training before the marathon: '30'. The idea was to do 18 easy kilometers, followed by 10 fast ones (pace around 4:40 min/km) and finish with 2 kilometers of jogging, for the total of 30K. I did this training in New York and although I sticked to the general structure, the pace I was going at was MUCH lowered than planned: average 5:46 min/km for the whole training and 5:33 min/km for the fast 10K. At first I was devastated with that, thinking it's a clear s...

Not much training (not even 50K) due to stay in NY. But next week should be better... 15 11 Apr - 17 Apr This week's totals: 4x, 5:05, 49km [6:05] Next week's plans: 5x, 9:03, 93km 1:03 1:24 1:28 1:07 10.8 km 12 km 15.2 km 10.9 km ER 10km RS 60' [TM] SR 9km [SW] ER 11km 132 hrm 148 hrm 150 hrm 125 hrm 5:21 min/km #12 4:46 min/km 5:56 min/km I knew that from Thursday on it will be difficult to do any running due to my stay in NYC. So I did an easy training on Monday, even though I was tired from 10K and I followed up with a running strength on a treadmill on Tuesday and the usual Wednesday run with SportsWorld. Then 3 day break :( and I managed to wrap the week up with an easy run in the hilly Central Park . Next week my sightseeing schedule is much less tight and I hope to be back to normal training. As a matter of fact I hope to do more running than in any week so far, starting off with a fast 30K on Monday -- it's the last moment to do t...

10/04/2011 10K Grootebroek, Netherlands 41:50 4:11 min/km 172 hrm 8/62 (12.9%) Getting up at 8:00 was tough, especially that lately I've been leading a night-life; going to bed ~2am and often not getting up before 11am. The journey went only with minor complications and I was there with enough time to do a proper warm-up and not run from the station to the race already ;). The weather was pretty good, sunny, but not too hot and if I was to complain about something it would be about the wind -- not too bad, but enough to be annoying. The main event was 10miles run, which started at 11:00. For 10K there was only a bunch of people -- as I learned after the race there were only 62 people who completed this distance. This gave me a unique opportunity to start in the first row -- my first :) I started not to far behind the leaders. After around 500m I even made an attempt to catch up with them, but the pace was too fast for me and I had to let them go. In the e...

Not too much mileage but few intense trainings this week with a 10K race on Sunday. 14 4 Apr - 10 Apr This week's totals: 5x, 5:25, 58km [6:55] Next week's plans: 4x, 6:09, 63km 1:27 1:32 1:03 0:41 0:42 13.0 km 17.0 km 11.9 km 6.4 km 10.0 km RS 60' [TM] SR 11km [SW] FR 6x1km/4' jog 6km S! 10km (Grootebroek) 147 hrm 158 hrm 165 hrm 129 hrm 172 hrm #12 4:45 min/km 4:00 min/km 5:39 min/km 4:11 min/km Short but intense trainings. Running strength on Tuesday, then a reasonably fast run with Michal & Sportsworld on Wednesday and 6 1km intervals on Friday at 4:00 min/km . Then an easy "warm-up" on Saturday and 10K race on Sunday, described in the next post . Next week will be tough as I'm leaving for the States. I hope to squeeze in 3 trainings Monday to Wednesday but Thursday morning I have my flight and during the first week that I'll spent in New York doing any running will be rather difficult. We'll see...

Tomorrow morning I'm going to run 10K in Grootebroek -- a small village in the north of Holland. My form? Well, I'm afraid I pushed too hard this week, with too many tough trainings. Also the speed interval training that I wanted to do on Thursday, slipped to Friday; too close to the race day. Today I slept very shortly, woken up by the postman in the morning. And I may have had one too many yesterday ;)... well, excuses, excuses :). Enough already. Plans? Goals? Well, according to McMillan's calculator my 1:33:05 in the Warsaw half-marathon indicates that I should be able to do 41:50 tomorrow. Not bad at all given that my personal best on this distance is mere half a minute faster, 41:22 . But of course I'll do my best to beat that. And in case I manage to get to the finish line even one second faster than that -- I'm gonna be very happy indeed. Wish me good luck :)

Few days of recovery after the half-marathon and then back to regular schedule. 13 28 Mar - 3 Apr This week's totals: 5x, 7:11, 74km [7:11] Next week's plans: 5x, 6:04, 63km 1:12 1:15 1:21 1:04 2:19 12.6 km 12.5 km 12.8 km 10.6 km 25.9 km ER 12km ER 12km RS 7km, 7x[ssw] ER 10km SR 15km + 3x1'/3' 140 hrm 136 hrm 133 hrm 136 hrm 158 hrm 5:27 min/km 5:42 min/km 5:46 min/km 5:42 min/km 4:43 min/km First days of this week I spent in Warsaw, recovering from the half-marathon . So easy run on Tuesday and another one on Thursday, with rest days on Monday and Wednesday. On Friday I did running strength. Then on Saturday I decided to give my Green Silence a try. Since I didn't get any sleep the night before (friend's party + early flight) and I wasn't sure how running in those lights shoes will go, I only did slow 10K. It felt good and I'm seriously thinking of gradually incorporating more and more runs with light shoes and, who kno...