Happy Halloween ... and an injury setback?

Photo by Flatbush Gardener

Happy Halloween to all of you, whether you “celebrate it” or not. In our family it is a pretty big event, and we’ve done some decorating to scare the kids away .. but more and more are ringing our bell trick-and-treating. Halloween has gotten quite popular here in Germany, and a lot of kids take the chance to collect some “Naschis” (sweets). As my wife was on a weekend trip with some friends, I was on duty and opening the door for hours.

I had to do some hobbling around as I twisted my knee yesterday. It was the first time we had an indoor session this season. It’s always nice to meet 20 people or so from my tri-club and do some fun stuff .. some little games to warm up, some running drills, some strengthening and stretching. In one of the little games I slipped on the newly done floor in the gymnasium and twisted my left knee. At first it hurt like hell, but it quickly got better and I was able to continue with the session. I had some problems when bending or straightening my knee, but I wasn’t much worried as there was no swelling at all.

This morning I felt a bit stiff, but still not too bad and was thinking of getting a quick bike session in in the afternoon. I spent the morning at the birthday of my godchild, and when I came back home any movement in my knee hurt quite a bit. I also realized that I had a bit of a swelling, so I scratched the bike and probably also the long run I wanted to do tomorrow. Cooling helped a bit ..

I just that it’s not anything serious. I tore a ligament (for those in the know: the ACL) in my left knee in 1998 or so, but never had any problems after that healed up (there was no operation to re-construct the ACL). When I tore that, it hurt a whole lot more, and the swelling was immediate and much worse. So even while something happened when I did the twisting, I hope that a few days of resting will take care of the damage was done.

While I don’t think that my Ratzeburg race in in trouble (after all it’s four full weeks until then), I’ve got to shred the plan I had put together. Not much use in running hard when I can’t move my knee properly. First order now is to be patient while the healing takes place. As I’ve got a little business trip at the end of next week (Thursday/Friday), I’ll take things easy until then. Maybe a little test run on Tuesday if the leg feels better. Now I’ll just go to bed, ice the knee some more and read a bit.

Keep your fingers crossed for me, it would be a real bummer to be injured now that I was getting in shape ..

Lübeck Marathon 2009

Yesterday (Sunday), I took part in the second running of the Lübeck Marathon. There was an option to run the full marathon, but I “only” ran the half marathon which was long enough for me at this time of the year. As I described in my previous post, it was an out-and-back course.

The morning was a bit grey and overcast, but when I stepped out of my front door, I realized that it was quite warm for the season – we had the first night frosts a week ago, and now we were at over 10°C (about 50°F). So definitely no cap, but I decided to run in my long sleeve.

The race

Thinking that the course would be relatively flat, I was hoping to be able to run a sub-1:35h half marathon which would be a 4:30/k pace. So I started out pretty quick, even a little bit faster than that. I felt good, the course was a bit downhill, and I felt in control. But I was starting to get worried about the return leg, it would become quite hard to keep a good pace going. It was also getting quite worm, and we started to run down into the Herrentunnel, I noticed some people were taking off their long-sleeve-shirts and continue to run in short sleeves.

Here’s a screenshot of my Garmin GPS data on Google Earth from the race. We started in the lower left section on the old island center of Lübeck and went out North-East:

The Herrentunnel is the section were there is a gap in the GPS track, so it was about the 8k mark. Running downhill into the tunnel I really let it rip – it feels great to run with a quick turnover without the HR shooting up. But when I hit the bottom of the tunnel, the street out of the tunnel looked like a vertical wall and I felt very sluggish running out of the tunnel. The HR went through the roof, and I had to take things a little bit easier in order not to blow up.

Thankfully, there was an aid station pretty soon after the tunnel, and I took some coke to get some power back. I was struggling a bit longer, but felt okay when we hit the turn-around point. I was almost exactly at 47:30, on pace for a 1:35 finish. But I had given back all the time I had gained in the earlier parts of the race and I knew that it was going to be really hard to go at the same pace for the return leg.

I took in some more coke and mentally prepared for going back through the tunnel. I decided to limit my HR running out of the tunnel in order not to kill myself, even if that meant loosing some time. So running through the tunnel for the second time, I kept to my hard pace HR limit of 150 beats, and there were quite a few people running by me. There was some more uphill after the tunnel and it was at this point that the wind was quite strong. We had it in our back on the way out, but now it was straight in our face. I was quite happy that I had my long-sleeve shirt on, it would have been quite cold otherwise.

After some more Coke, I was on the last 6 or 7 k for the race. The course was still pointing upward, but not very steep. I had planned to pick it up at this point, but my pace was hovering at a bit over a 4:30 pace so it was clear that I would not be able to make up the time I had lost going through the tunnel. Even so, I managed to stay focused and go hard towards the finish. I managed to overtake some others, and was totally spent when I reached the finish line. My parents (who came to see me finish) were a bit shocked to see me totally wasted but were relieved when I recovered pretty quickly.

Evaluation of my race and planning November training

Even though I didn’t manage to quite make the time I wanted to, I’m still happy with my race. I went out fast, but still reasonable enough to give me a chance to make my time goal. When I ran into problem at the first pass through the tunnel, I properly regrouped and managed not to explode completely. I ran strong towards the end, so even if I started out too quick, my race didn’t turn into a disaster and I managed to run a decent time.

Comparing this course to what I know the Ratzeburg course is like, I’d say that they are similarly hard and hilly. If I’d have to take a pick, I’d say that the course in Ratzeburg is easier, as it has long totally flat sections. So as I ran at a pace faster than what I will need for a sub-2h finish in Ratzeburg, I’m confident that I’m on a good track. I’ll continue with the faster sessions for the next weeks, but also want to include a few 2 hour long runs to extend the endurance that I have now. I’ll keep you posted …

Evaluation of Lübeck Marathon

I’d like to finish with a few words about the Lübeck marathon so that if you ever think of running it, you’ve got some information. I can only offer a perspective from running the half, but it should be a good indication of what things would be for the full marathon. Be sure to drop me an email if you have some more questions!

As you may have gleaned from my race report, the course is not very suited if you want to run a PR – it’s just too hilly for that. But that’s almost the only negative thing about the race. The only thing I’d add is that along the course there are some sections that are not all that pretty as the course uses one of the big roads leading out of town.

On the positive side, the start is in the beautiful old part of Lübeck and it’s very interesting to run through the tunnel (even if it takes some toll on your legs). The rest of the marathon course will also be along mixed territory but there will definitely be some very beautiful sections. You didn’t have a ton of spectators outside the start/finish area, but there were a lot of sections where people were making quite some noise.

Also, from what I was able to see, the race was really well organized. The course was well marked, kilometer signs were clearly visible, there was a lot of stuff available at the end stations (at least for the half-marathoners who came first .. but I haven’t seen many half-marathons that offered coke and bananas etc. starting at 5k). Race packet pickup worked well (even though I had to use the “emergency pickup” on race morning) and there were all the usual amenities after the race (drinks, food, massage etc.). I don’t think that there is much to improve upon.

All in all, it was a fun race to run, and I’m glad I put this on my schedule for this year. It was a valuable step forward in my preparation for Ratzeburg, but it would also be suitable for a season-ending race on its own.

Thoughts before Lübeck Half-Marathon

This Sunday, I’ll run my next race, a half-marathon in Lübeck. It’s part of the 2nd running of the Lübeck Marathon. They’ve got a full marathon, a half-marathon, a 4.2k fun run and 10-person marathon relay. Last year, I was registered for the first running and even picked up my race number, but felt too sick to run on the day of the race. So, a new course for me …

Lübeck Marathon

The race starts in the middle of the old down (basically where the Lübeck City Run ended – the race I ran two weeks ago) and goes out toward the Baltic Sea. The turnaround for the marathon is in the port city of Travemünde, Lübeck’s “sea-side resort”. (Readers of Thomas Mann’s epic novel “Buddenbrocks” will have heard of it.) Of course, the half-marathon turns a bit earlier, after having gone through the “Herrentunnel”, a road tunnel under the river Trave:

Screenshot from Google Earth

Coming out of the tunnel will be the steepest section of the course, and I assume that the rest of the course will be quite flat.

What I’m a bit worried about is the fact that the half-marathon starts 15 minutes after the full marathon, and the full marathon starts with a short loop around the “Holstentor”, a pretty gate in the old town wall dating back to the middle-ages:

Photo by Frank Hamm

So I expect that we will run up to the slower marathoners pretty quick, but hopefully the number of participants will not be that high that there’ll be a lot of congestion.

Goals

After my successful Lübeck City Run I’m quite confident that I can run a decent fast half-marathon. I’ll shoot for a 4:30/k pace which would result in a sub-1:35 half marathon. That’ll be a hard pace and I’ll have to work to hold that pace for the whole race, but it should be possible. My base goal would be to run under 1:37.

All of this is of course based on the time I want to run in Ratzeburg at the end of November. That’ll be a 26k race around the “Großer Ratzeburger See” (Great Ratzeburger Lake), mostly on trails and with some quite steep hills. I’d like to be able to run that race in about 2:00 hours – a 4:37/k pace. (4:37/k pace is a 1:37:24 half-marathon.) As the course in Ratzeburg is probably a bit slower than the road-marathon course in Lübeck, I’d like to have some extra cushion – 1 minute for the hills at the start, and another minute for the hills towards the end. That results pretty nicely in an even 4:30/k pace (that would be 1:57 for 26k, plus two minutes of cushion would give me a 1:59).

So I’m confident that if I can run a sub-1:35 half marathon this weekend, I have a good shot at a sub-2 race in Ratzeburg with another five weeks of training.

Training in the last weeks

The last two weeks I have not managed to get a lot of training in. First, I was quite tired after the Lübeck City Run and took the first few days a bit easy. On Thursday, I did an Interval session (1k @ Marathon, half-marathon and twice at 10k-pace) that I found to be very hard, and I was really tired after that. I had a few days off work after that and did a lot of things with my wife (she had her birthday with the regular family and fried parties, some shopping trips etc.), and I barely squeezed in short runs on these days. Also, I didn’t feel like doing any longer or faster sessions.

On Tuesday, I felt a bit fresher, but I still shortened my initially planned 19k run to 13.5k. But I included a good length of faster tempo, about 5k @marathon pace and another 3k @ half-marathon pace. I wanted to go a bit faster towards the end, but I didn’t have enough juice in me to run a consistent 10k pace.

I wanted to do another faster run today (Thursday), but I had to work late and take care of my sick wife, so I had to move that to tomorrow. 2 days before the race is probably not a good time to do fast intervals, so I’ll probably just run 2k or so at marathon to half-marathon pace in order to be fresh for Sunday’s race.

Hopefully my performance on Sunday will give me confidence for the next training phase …

Lübeck City Run

This Sunday, I ran another short race – the Lübeck City Run, an 11.3k race in Lübeck’s beautiful old city center.

Here’s a picture of the last few meters:

(Of course, at the time of the race the chairs, tables and umbrellas
were removed and we had a free course.)

Here’s another look at the course from my GPS data (a screenshot from Google Earth):

It shows Lübeck’s old city center on the island in the middle. The island is formed by two rivers and some artificial additions in order to defend the city in the middle ages. A lot of pretty buildings and magnificent churches, some of them dating back to the 11th century, are located on the island.

The race started in the lower middle part of the island, we did two full loops (counter-clockwise) around the city and ended with a half loop on the old “Marktplatz” in the middle of the island. The GPS data showed it was exactly 11.3k, and it was a good proof of the accuracy of the course and the accuracy of my Garmin 405 when not running under tree cover. (Even though the paths from the two loops are quite distinct in the upper part.)

It was getting quite cold during the night before the race (about 5°C, about 40°F) but the rain stopped in time and the streets were dry by the time the race started. It took some thought to figure out whether to run in short or long, but I still decided to go short/short. It turned out to be warm enough, but if it had started to ran it would have been quite cold.

The race itself went really well. I was confident I could run in under 50 minutes, and I wanted to get close to my course PR of 49:05. This would require about a 4:25 to 4:20 pace. I started off pretty fast. After the initial congestion at the start (lots of first timers .. seems they have to start in the first or second row), I got into a fast but still comfortable pace, one I was confident I could run for the whole race. My Garmin data showed that I was running at about a 4:10 pace .. it didn’t feel that fast but was confirmed by the first marker that I saw at 3k. I just hoped that I’d be able to hold that pace!

I noticed that my breathing got a bit harder, but I was able to hold my HR pretty even – always a sign that I manage to keep my focus and don’t overpace. Towards the end of the second loop I was catching up and overtaking one of the people from my club that is about my level but was beating me in the last few races. Another positive sign that my race was going well!

My pace was dropping a bit into the 4:20s, but I was running as fast as I could at this point. There was some movement in the field, but I was still overtaking a few people. The last uphill was really hard and I lost a few spots but still managed to come in at 47:57, a 4:14 average and a PR by more than a minute. Excellent!

It’ll be interesting to see is how much recovery I need before I can get into my next hard training sessions. There’ll be some things to do with my wife, so I hope that I’ll be able to get a few hard sessions in before my next planned race, a half marathon in two weeks. Should be interesting to see how much I can improve within four weeks since my last half-marathon …

Looking forward to Lübeck City Run

I’m writing this while the Ironman Hawaii race is going on … go Mitch!

(Photo by Bret Arnett)

Tomorrow, I’ll be running the City Run in Lübeck. As my wife and I have our wedding anniversary on Monday and plan to take a little trip, it’ll be a while before I’ll get to post on the outcome.

The race is in the pretty old part of Lübeck (I’ll try to find a picture for the results post) and it’s add the odd distance of 11.3k. (Don’t know why they didn’t try to find a 10k distance, but whatever.) I ran this race a few years back (2006?) in 49:05 (a bit over 4:20 pace). I’m not sure if I was any fitter that year, but I hope to go at least under 50 minutes (4:25 pace).

My training this week has been going pretty good. I did an interval session on Tuesday where I managed to get some faster k’s in. But still, anything faster than a 10k speed is very hard and I cannot hold it for very long. I can hold a 4:30 for quite a while, but anything faster than a 4:10 just kills me. I’m not sure what it is, my HR is not really that high. On Thursday, I did a tempo run with 5.5k at marathon and half marathon speed with a fast finish tat felt quite comfortable.

I wanted to do a nice easy bike this morning, but it started to rain, I got cold pretty quick and pulled the plug. Still took me a few minutes under the shower to get warm again. Hopefully I didn’t catch a cold. Also, I don’t know what influence tonight’s IM is going to have – it’ll be 3am before I go to bed.

Wonder who’ll have won the IM by then. Chrissie looks like a safe bet for the women, but the men’s race is wide open. Love the IM Live broadcast so far!

Weighty Issues – Update after September

In earlier posts (Weighty Issues and Planning Rest of 2009) I described my weight loss goals for my 2010 race at IM Germany. Here’s the update after one focused month of training.

Photo by radialmonster

October 1st: 89.3kg

My goal weight for the end of September was to get under 89kg. At the “official” weigh-in on October 1st, I was at 89.3kg. So – I missed my first goal. But my weight was moving around quite a bit: By next morning I was at 88.3kg, the day after that I was at 88.7kg. A bit strange to see that much movement, but all in all I was not too worried and I don’t see any reason to change my weight goals. Next up: Under 88kg by November 1st.

September training

I’m quite happy with the progress I have made in my training. I’ve put a pretty solid month together, and I’m hungry to do more in October. A couple of things show that I have a lot of potential:

• no top speed
  As noted earlier, anything faster than a 10k speed is very hard for me and I can hardly do any reasonable intervals with 5k or even faster speeds. I hope that’ll change, at least I plan to do another short (11.3k) race and do short, fast interval sessions.
  
• relatively low volume
  Because I’m not doing really long sessions (longest runs are about 14k or 1:15h), my total volume is still quite low. I think that later in the year I’ll be adding some longer sessions (at still pretty fast speeds compared to the long and slow session in preparation for my Ultra). That should also help me to loose some more weight.
  
• long time to recover from harder sessions and races
  My fitness is still not were it was, and it shows in the time I need to recover from harder sessions and races. For example, after my half-marathon in Alstertal, it took me until the end of the week to get some freshness back. I was still going out each day, but the sessions were short and slow. Once my fitness gets better, I hope to be able to recover faster and get back to harder training sooner.

October plans

There are two more races I have lined up in October:

• October 10th: Citylauf Lübeck – 11.3k – goal: sub50 minutes (4:25min/k)
• October 24th: Lübeck Half-Marathon – goal: sub1:37h (4:35min/k)
  

These races should get me closer to the fitness required for my goal race at the end of November where I want to run 26k under 2 hours (4:37min/k pace) on a pretty hard course. The goals for October are attainable if I manage to get my training in.

In the first half I want to do some faster intervals (10k pace and faster), in the second half I want to add some longer tempo pace runs (20k run with 10k at half-marathon pace). If the weather holds up, it should be fun!

Another big item on my calendar: Watch IM Hawaii on IMLive on October10th. There is a lot of contenders for the top spots .. should be a great and exciting race!