Run, Koper, run

Boy, how I hate Blogger... I lost this post... twice! It's now the third time I'll be writing it and...... seriously. Blogger; you so let me down. Sunday's long night run did two things to me: made me super tired and caused blisters on my right foot. After taking Monday off I went for a casual jog on Tuesday but it only made the blister situation worse so no more running during the week. And then on Saturday I was supposed to do Crystal Springs 50k with Coastal Trail runs and the big question was whether it was a good idea or not. Not running during the week could work in my favor, serving as a force taper of sorts. On the other hand the blister was not completely healed. As I was already registered I decided to give it a shot. Preparations for the race went very smoothly. I woke up early, drove to the start, picking up a breakfast sandwich on the way. I arrived with plenty of time to spare so had peaceful breakfast, picked up my number and was taking my time to get ...

What a week! But let's start at the beginning. Monday off, Tuesday off to Black Mountain. I started strong and when at my first checkpoint, quarter of the way in, I realized I may have a shot at my PB, so I continued even stronger. Some 50+ minutes later, totally tired, I made it to the top. And yes, I did improve my personal best, although as I only realized after uploading the workout , by mere 8 seconds. Still, this being one of my most explored segments, I'll happily take any PB :). Tuesday and Wednesday just easy, recovery runs and on Thursday I decided to do another workout: steady pace run . I ended up averaging 4:25min/km which, given the fact that didn't do any speed work in a loong time, I considered decent enough. But the absolute highlight of the week was the long run on Sunday. With Yohann we decided to do the 50k+ in the Ohlone Wilderness, essentially following the route of the Ohlone Wilderness 50k race. We were planning it for a week and given how hot t...

Short post, as this was a pretty uneventful week. Easy run on Tuesday and then instead of Black Mountain I did a steady run on Wednesday. Given that I'm recovering and coming back from a running break, 4:34min/km, with a very strong wind (although that's almost a given on the Bay Trail) was not too bad. Then a short run on Thursday, long weekend run in Santa Teresa County Park on Saturday and another short run on Sunday. As for the weekend run Santa Teresa turned out to be a nice park; just on the outskirts of San Jose. Again it was a super hot day, so after my recent experience I wasn't taking my chances and I took much more water... which of course meant that there was water in the park. I'm not sure what else I can say. It was a good run. And the sky was simply amazing so I took a number of shots and some of them come out rather nicely, I think, so be sure to check out the full album .

So after all the cycling craziness of last week it was time to get back to running. My leg was getting better, still giving me some trouble but good enough to resume training. I took Monday off, did an easy run on Tuesday and encouraged by how my quad felt decided to try Black Mountain on Wednesday. Obviously after such a break I wasn't expecting to set a PR but still I gave it my best and missed it by 2 minutes, registering my 6th best time ever; reasonably well. My jog back was quite interesting. It was a hot day so I started late and by the time I was going down it was dark and I was using a headlamp and then suddenly I was... hit by a bat. No, it's not a grammatical mistake. And I mean a flying bat , as opposed to a baseball bat . At some point I saw in my peripheral vision something coming at me very fast and before I had a chance to react... smack in my face! I'm not sure what was worse: the pain or the freak-out effect :) One more easy run on Friday and then a lo...

TL; DR It is a looong post, as this was a week with looots of cycling ;) (I currently have a 3 week delay in posting, so this actually took place a while back) So, finally the bet with my friend was on. My quad injury was still making it impossible for me to run, but I could cycle all right, so I decided no point in waiting any longer. The rules were roughly as follows: 1 point for 1 kilometer of running, 1 point for 3 kilometers of cycling, 1 point for 200m of elevation gain (either running or cycling). Plus to make it all more interesting we kept the workouts secret so as not to know what the other person is doing and to essentially make it a race against a ghost. I did not have much fiddling room strategy-wise as I could not run and it was a no-brainer that with those rules it was best to stay the hell away from the hills; they would tire you quickly and were totally not worth the points. After some deliberation I decided to do most of my rides on a trail next to work. It ...