Run, Koper, run

This is the week I've been looking forward to: Memorial Day, a day off on Monday and a 3 day weekend; a rare treat that I was going to use for some serious running! But first time to go through a regular workweek. Monday a typical day off from running and boy, did I need it; I was so sore from the previous week! Then on Tuesday I had to push myself hard to go for my usual Black Mountain hill run. I was giving it my best, missed my PR by 20 seconds but had a way lower average HR than one month ago when I set the PR ; I guess that's still progress. On Wednesday I was super tired and had a running class at the gym that I signed up for recently. The promise of the class was some work on the technique, so I decided to give it a try, but instead we did a short, easy, 2 mile jog, so I split and finished the workout on my own. But I didn't have much in the tank and called it a day after mere 10k. I needed a break and took a day off on Thursday, but then felt bad and did an eas...

Week 19 was the week leading to the Princess-y Cinderella race. Even with the race coming up I still wanted to fit in a hill run on Tuesday but my shins were hurting so I ended up not running that day at all and only doing two easy runs on Wednesday and Thursday. Still my shins were giving me trouble just before the race so it was quite surprising to see that the race actually went pretty well. With the race being the highlight of the week, not much more I can say, except for directing you to the race write-up for details. With race on Saturday, I took Sunday off but the following Monday I was already on the move. That might have been a bit too early as on Tuesday I could hardly walk and had to take a day off :)... but then I followed up with three easy runs on three following days. By the way for those of you wondering what does " CPro " label next to weight training means (yeah, yeah, I know you guys and I know you like to study my weekly calendar in detail and wonder...

Another day, another race, huh? The week leading to it was anything but ideal: I had to take it easy with my workouts as my calf was giving me some trouble. Not a great place to be just before a race. Surprisingly I got a decent night's sleep before the race; possibly a first for me. I woke up at 5:30am, before the alarm, and was out the door shortly after 6am. Warming up for the race I could feel my calf not being its usual self. However, sadly, for me "racing" and "taking it easy" are two concepts that never come up together. The previous night when I should be wondering whether I'll be able to finish the race, I was instead trying to figure out whether I'll be able to do it under 5 hours. Now, during the warm-up, when my calf was hurting and I should be seriously thinking whether in those circumstances I should be running this race at all, instead I was imagining that with only around 30 runners in the 50k race, I could possibly finish in the top...

After almost getting injured at the beginning of last week I took three days off and now, on Monday, it was time to try a gentle jog. I decided to do my run on a hill next to work. Primary reason for that was that I was worried that my calf could give me trouble at any point and I'd have to call it a day early. But the added benefit was that instead of my usual completely flat loop I was now running up and down a gentle hill. So I did gentle 12K on Monday and then 14K on Tuesday. Both times I could feel my calf not being its usual self but also not bad enough to stop me from running. Wednesday off and on Thursday classic: Black Mountain. I didn't think I was ready for an all out assault on this tough course, so instead of the usual 90%+ effort I decided to scale it back to ~80%; still an effort but a controlled one. It went fine. Sure, substantial 6 minutes slower than my PB but that was only to be expected. When I took a look at all my previous efforts on that segment it wa...