The last few days, I had a chance to finally do some decent training. My knee was feeling better, and the whole week was full of little successful tests if the knee is okay. Unfortunately, I was stuck in Hamburg because some trains weren’t running, so I missed my regular winter Friday general conditioning session.
By Saturday, I was really anxious for a harder run. But first things first, I had to get our garden in winter shape with my wife. The weather didn’t fully cooperate, but we got the job done when it was getting dark. So that meant another headlamp run. I wasn’t really sure what was going to happen when I turned up the pace, so I had decided to test the waters with something demanding, but not too fast: 3* (1k@Marathon pace, 1k@ 1/2 marathon pace), all run without a break. It went really well, running fast wasn’t a problem, and I was able to crank it up even a bit faster on the last interval (4:27/k as per the Garmin).
For Sunday, we were expected at my Mom’s for lunch, so I used that for a longer run. It’s about 10k to them, but I can add some little extras to make it anywhere between a one or two hour run without too much effort. I slept a bit too long for a really long run, but it was to be the longest run since starting training after my vacation in August, so I took my iPod, my FuelBelt with some water and Clif ShotBlocks and a camera – so this post will have a lot of pictures.
From the start, the sun was out and quite some traffic on the trails:
(If you look closely, you can see some mountain bikers that had just overtaken me.) It was really beautiful today. Most of the leaves were already down, but the sun was out in full force, and it was quite warm for Mid-November - 12°C, about 55°F. Usually it’s about 5°C (40°F) and gloomy grey skies with some fog. This was a lot better:
It was a bit tricky to see the trail with all the leaves, but it made for some soft running. After some nice trails, I ran along a forest road in glorious sunshine:
It’s a bit tricky to see, but although we don’t have any mountains were I live, there is a lot of up and down .. hopefully that helps me get stronger for the next season!
After the forest, there was a bit of open fields,
a river crossing and then the next forest
The sun was still out in full force and it was getting quite warm. As I was getting closer to where my parents live, the traffic was picking up again:
But I can live quite well with horses and a little family as companions on the trail!
The run was over almost too soon. I tacked on a little extra loop and ended then run after just under 1:30h. Without really noticing, I had picked up the pace a bit and ended up with a 5:30 average pace (as compared to my typical 6:00 min/k pace on longer runs). The last few k’s were even close to 5:00 pace!
All in all, a great run. I didn’t think too much about my knee, and I even though at times I listened hard for any pain or instability, I didn’t notice anything. I guess I’m on for Ratzeburg, though it’s hard to guess where I’m at. Some predictions have to wait for the week before the race!
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