Run, Koper, run

After-marathon recovery Cannot display training data. If you're viewing it in an RSS feeder (such as Google Reader) you'll need to open the original post to see it. Usually after a marathon think about everything but running and would take at least one week off. Not this time. I decided to do a short jog immediately on Monday, hopefully to help with recovery. It took quite a lot of strong will to do that, but actually once I started moving it didn't hurt that much. On Wednesday I joined the regular Sportsworld training and the pain was fairly manageable by then. Gym training on Thursday and another Sportsworld run on Friday. This time it was only Jan and me, and, as expected, Jan had no mercy :). Unfortunately my speed sensor broke down during this run but according to my GPS for the best part of the 16K that we did, we were going faster than 5:00min/km -- tough speed if you just run a marathon and indeed my HR confirms that. Then I was planning to already do some long r...

Showtime Cannot display training data. If you're viewing it in an RSS feeder (such as Google Reader) you'll need to open the original post to see it. So, this week the Paris test finally came. I will not write about this week, since I already did it in the Paris marathon post. However, I thought that this week is a good opportunity to roll out the changes to the training presentation :). Frankly, I was already quite happy with the previous version as it essentially contained all the crucial information about all the trainings in the week (compare it to Endomondo's or RunKeeper's calendar views and hopefully you'll understand why I was happy with my version). But understanding all this information required carefully inspecting all the numbers. The main advantage of the big changes that I'm finally rolling out today is that now all this information is visualized and available at a glance. Both time & distance have their bars; their length corresponds to tr...

15/04/2012 marathon Paris, France 3:17:55 4:41 min/km 171 hrm So. Paris. Would I finally break my PB? I certainly hoped so as I was sick of not being able to do that for such a long time. I certainly worked hard for that. Since the beginning of 2011 not only did I run a lot, but, perhaps more importantly, I run as systematically as never before. That surely had to count for something, right? RIGHT? I thought my preparations were fairly decent. I may have overdid it a bit with the 40K run just 3 weeks before the marathon. I may... They were decent all right. The week leading to the marathon I decided to take it very easy. On Tuesday I did easy 6K followed by strides (10x100m). And then I did a sport massage. With a follow-up on Wednesday. That was another first. The masseuse claimed that this should make a huge difference. I wasn't so sure but it certainly wouldn't hurt. Then on Thursday I did 5 1K intervals. While doing them I was thinking. Talking about t...

Last week before the marathon... The last week was lousy. But I forgot to mention that even with it being lousy, I managed to reach my new monthly record, with 344km covered in March. This week I started off with easy 14K on Tuesday. Then on Wednesday I did some long intervals. My plan was to repeat a training that I did 3 weeks earlier, i.e. 4x2K. The funny thing is that after having rested last week now I felt as if I was starting a new running season -- i.e. my legs were hurting after the easy (!) training from Tuesday and I didn't feel capable of great accomplishments. To make matters worse still, I wrongly calibrated my watch so that I had no idea how fast I was running. Net result: not very fast as I averaged 4:11 over the intervals (compared to 4:01 three weeks earlier). Not a good sign. Not at all... I took Thursday off, did easy 11K on Friday. Normally at this point, one week before the marathon, I would race 10K. It was Easter so not a chance to find a race. I first t...

An unplanned rest week. It started slow: two easy runs on Tuesday and Wednesday... and only got slower since then. I had big plans for the weekend as I was going to Polish mountains for the weekend and was looking forward to do two relatively long runs there. But it was not meant to be. As it turned out I only took short sleeved t-shirt and shorts with me. And it was snowing. If I were on my own that would probably not have stopped me from going, but as it were my family would disown me if I did that ;). Plus, frankly, I didn't feel like. Yeah, sure I was looking forward a lot to those mountain runs, but it's one thing to run with the sun shining and quite another with the snow falling and shivering from cold. Plus, frankly, I felt lazy. So no runs. Nil. Zip. So I guess I got my pre-marathon rest a bit early. So I guess now I'll try to do the next week moderately challenging; not too much milage and probably only 4 trainings but including 2 intense sessions: interval tr...