Run, Koper, run

It looked like finally my training was gathering steam. Monday traditionally a day off but even on Tuesday I felt the effects of the previous week. In other words: I was sore. Still, I did my Black Mountain hill run as planned and it went... awesome! I improved my PB on that route by almost 2 minutes, while at the same time my average heart rate dropped. I may obsess too much about numbers but in this case it's not a fluke and the story they are telling is clear: my form is improving. And that obviously makes me a very happy panda . On Wednesday I felt pretty beat from that training but still I had some extra spring in my step and a slightly faster average pace than usually during my easy runs, further confirming that, hey, my training efforts seem to be paying off! On Thursday I was again tired and I had the slightest hint of soreness in my right calf, the same one I injured last year . Still, I decided to go ahead with my planned training for the day: intervals ( stupid, stupi...

A solid week, finally! The start was not very encouraging. Even though I had Monday off and the previous week was fairly modest effort-wise, on Tuesday I was still sore and tired. My left hamstring -- my personal over-training-meter -- was throbbing, sending me clear signals that rest is in order. But with the race coming up there is no time for rest. Still, I decided not to do the hill run, but an easy jog instead. Then I followed up with two more on Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday I was planning to take a day off and finish off with two runs over the weekend, but instead I ended up doing a hill run on Friday. I was 1:45 slower than my PR but I think that's not too bad given that it was my fourth running day in a row. Saturday a hike in Half Moon Bay and Sunday a long but flat run on the Bay trail . So all in all 5 runs and a total of 83km -- not bad at all, especially that including the hike it adds up to 100km. But I have to say that Sunday evening I felt really, really ...

So yet again an unplanned break and yet again starting, essentially, from square one. I started with the tough hill run up the Black Mountain. Only one minute slower than a month ago and my second fastest time ever, so not bad at all. I followed up with an easy run on Wednesday but then first I missed my Thursday run as I felt too tired and then I chose to skip my Friday run. That was mostly because I was planning to run together with Yohann on Saturday and was afraid that I won't manage to keep up if I'm not rested :) The long Saturday run was pretty neat, other than the fact that I had to get up at 9am ;). We ran on trails of Stevens Creek County Park and Fremont Older Open Space Preserve . We didn't have a map nor even consulted one beforehand but the plan was to run ~20km and that's exactly what we did. Good stuff. I concluded with an easy run on Sunday so, even though I missed one run, I ended up with 4 workouts and a total 66km. Not too bad for starters. But...

This is probably going to be my shortest post ever. Not much to report; most of those past two weeks I spent in Warsaw and in my busy schedule there I didn't find any time for running. That means that now I'll be restarting my running yet again and, with less than 5 weeks before the next 50k race, I better make it fast. If I want to seriously think about facing the Chimera beast this year then I better get down to business...

(The title of this post alludes to the great book by Scott Jurek: "Eat and run" ). I never cared much about my eating habits. I like to eat, I have a sweet tooth and for me running was essentially something that allowed me to eat whatever I wanted without the consequences of inflating like a balloon . Still, over the years I accumulated a number of habits that I knew I should change, such as: eating exceeding amounts of chocolate, drinking sugary sports drinks after almost any run and getting hooked on (addicted to?) Red Bulls. What opened my eyes to a more general problem was when I stopped running in December last year. Day after day I was stepping on a scale with growing horror, as my weight was, slowly but steadily, going up. That was hardly a novelty. I'd see this phenomenon every time I stopped running for a bit, be it because of an injury, sickness or something else. However, this time there was an important difference: I was considering stopping running alt...