Run, Koper, run

... and back to no running What a crappy week; almost no sport at all. Duh. My only excuse is that I was in Poland and hardly had any time to think about running. I played some tennis on Thursday and that was surprisingly a lot of fun; surprisingly, given that I did not play for some 10 years, so was expecting to mainly hit the net and indeed I did a good share of that, but it was still enjoyable. My only run this week was on Sunday and even then I gave up the start in 10K race (all of the Sportsworld trio that went did their PBs, so maybe it's good I didn't as I would lower this statistics ;) and instead did an easy run on a treadmill. This was probably a good decision, though, as my left hamstring is in a pretty bad shape (I know, I know, looks like I'm getting old) and a race would not help it, I'm sure. All in all, if I want to be ready for April (Paris marathon) time to seriously get my s*** together. On a somewhat related note a friend of mine told me today ab...

Slowly recovering from the injury. Not much to talk about. My injury is slowly subsiding; slowly being the keyword. I'm having weekly visits with a physiotherapeutist and for now got a green light to do 3 runs weekly. I started with mere 30min and 6km and was slowly increasing time & distance until today I did a decent 16K. The funny part is that, with my watch being dead and hence not being there to tell me that I'm out of my HR zone and should slow down, and with only 3 runs a week, I am doing those runs at a reasonable pace; at least I'd rarely regularly run at sub-5:00 min/km. In any case, I really hope that one more week of taking things easy (I'll be in Poland most of this week and probably won't have much time for running) and then I hope to be able to start seriously preparing for Paris. Because the time is getting short...

2011: summary Time to look back at 2011. It's been a great year. I more than fulfilled my goals by running two marathons ( New Jersey marathon and Budapest marathon ) and one 50K ultra ( 50km van Assen ). Moreover I run almost 3100km this year -- I knew it's been a great and intense year but I didn't realize how much until I made the charts below that not only show that I was fairly regular (with the exception of 3 weeks after the Budapest marathon when I got lazy) but also how much more intense this year was than the previous ones. Btw. probably I'm paying up for it now with the over-training injury... A picture is worth a thousand words, right? So how much a video is worth? Anyway, summary of my races in 2011 below. Btw. I ran 13 races with a total of almost 250km: more than half of what I did in the previous 8 years altogether :). 2012: plans So what about next year? Some of my goals in no particular order: Running two marathons (Paris & Berlin?) and on...

Not a very good beginning of the year... Huh. On Monday I decided to test how my injury is doing and went for a usual easy run... but by the time I reached the half-way point of my run a fairly serious hailstorm started so my way back was... well, wet. Worse than that the injury didn't give up, so in the end on Thursday I finally visited a physiotherapeutist and the verdict was clear: I'll live but I need to take a break. I don't want to make it any worse than it is, so I decided to oblige. The hardest part of that was that I had the Egmond half-marathon coming up on Sunday and couldn't go for it :/. First time ever that I didn't go for a race that I subscribed for... At least my start account is clear, in the sense that I finished as many races as I started ;). But given that my Polar also died lately: not the best beginning of the year. Oh well. At least I had time to make a summary of my last year's runs -- more about that tomorrow :)

Another week off due to an injury. 51 26 Dec - 1 Jan This week's totals: 1x, 1:02, 11km [1:02] 1:02 10.5 km INT 3x1200m/2:30 4:00 min/km Unfortunately my shins injury continued into this week. I did a test run on Wednesday, planning to do 5, but due to technical problems ending up with only 3 intervals of 1200 meters with 2:30 minutes of jogging rest in between. I was fine during the run, but could feel the pain afterwards so decided to give it a rest till the end of the week (and year). It's a bit of a pity because before the injury slowed me down I was doing great. If I kept the pace I had until the 18th, I would end up with 395km in December -- which would not only be the best month ever, but also very close to the 400K mark. But as it is, I got a reminder that I'm not getting any younger and that now breaking distance records is not only about finding time to do so, but also about listening to my body and sometimes giving it a break -- something, I admit,...