More Snow Running

In my last post, I was already calling for Spring .. but then we got even more snow during the week, so it looks as if we have to do a few more snow runs.

This Sunday, we got another invitation from my Mom to join them for Sunday lunch. It’s become a kind of tradition for me to run to them (straight distance about 12k, but a lot of opportunity to “tack on”). My wife then takes the car and brings fresh clothes, and we enjoy the meal and the time with my parents. A pretty nice way to get a longer run in!

As hinted above, we had gotten some more snow. The first notable point on my run route was the “Herrenteich”, a dammed creek that has developed into a nice little lake:

It was created somewhere around the 12th century when the monks of the monastery that formed the basis of Reinfeld created some lakes to raise fish, especially carp. (Guess what is the traditional Christmas meal!) Today, it is used for rowing and swimming (and still raising fish!), and the upper region of the lake is a nature reserve.

After that, my route takes me into a little forest with some nice trails in a “rolling” territory:

There was less and less traffic before me, and at times it was nearly impossible to run in the deep snow and the drifts that had developed when the wind was blowing. Still, it felt great to be outside in the snow – my only problem was that I was collecting some snow in my shoes and I was getting wet socks and feet. Maybe I should get some gaiters .. but I wouldn’t know where to get them here in Germany – ideas,tips, anyone?

After that picture my battery bummed out on me (note to self: check battery before taking the camera next time). I had taken my FuelBelt with a bit of water and a little to eat. At times it was quite exhausting in deep snow (completely unrunnable!), but even after running for almost two hours I still felt great. I explored some new side trails following somebody else’s tracks and discovered some cool new “shortcuts”:

It was fantastic to be able to run in the middle of nowhere having the confidence to make it in time to my destination. After I reached my parents, I really enjoyed the hot shower and the lunch. When we got back home I even had a chance to take a little nap. What a great Sunday!

Waiting for Spring

Winter still has Northern Germany firmly in its grip (even if the photo was taken in Switzerland, this is pretty much what it looks like):

Photo by c0d3in3

In addition to all the snow, it has gotten windy and bitterly cold the last few days (temperatures down to -17°C / 0°F). It takes quite a while to “warm up” properly – which really means you gain back some feeling in your frozen fingers (even with gloves on). It is a bit tricky to run, most of the snow has been cleared from the streets, but there are still a lot of slippery sections. And the streets are a lot narrower, so you have to be extra careful not to be hit by an ongoing car. And anything resembling speedwork is totally foolish right now.

All there is to do is pass the time until spring arrives (which will be miserable because we then go from snow to mud). I try to get some longer sessions in, but work and life made this difficult during the week. I had two nice relaxed days planned for the weekend, but I came down with a bug and had to take Saturday and Sunday off in order to be in a decent shape for an important work-related meeting on Monday. I’m feeling okay now, and managed two nice runs on Monday and Tuesday, but still nothing resembling a long run. Hopefully, this weekend will be better.  I’m really anxious to get on some longer runs (around two hours), and I still have a bit of work before I can get there …

Lümmellauf 2010 – First race in the new year

Today, I participated in the Lümmellauf, my first race of this season.

As you can see from the photo of the start (found on the races website at luemmellauf.de), there was quite some snow on the ground and it was still snowing when the race started:

Because of all the snow, it was quite difficult to figure out what pace would be possible and of course I didn’t want to risk an injury. As it turned out, I needn’t have worried, it wasn’t very slippery. All the snow felt more like running on sand, so it was quite a strength workout. Before the start I felt that a 5:15/k pace would be reasonable, and maybe I could run a little bit faster. That would mean a 1h41 race time, hopefully a bit faster around 1:36:30 for a 5 min/k pace.

After the start, the first few k’s were needed for the field of 270 runners to sort itself out and spit out those that line up far too much to the front. My Garmin had some problems coming up with a correct pace under all the trees (and the numbers I saw were too slow), so I pretty much ran by feel and used the markers. After the first few markers, I settled into a hard, but maintainable pace right under 5:15 pace. It was a bit slippery and at times it was tricky to get solid footing, but I felt okay with the pace and hoped I could hold that pace for the whole distance.

At the end of the first loop (after around 9k) I was still running well, but my feet felt a bit strange: In order to have a good grip in all the snow, I had decided to run in my Nike Pegasus trail shoes, and this was by far the fastest pace I had ever run in these shoes. I was getting a few blisters at the top of my toes – probably the shoes are a little bit too small or I was moving around in the forefoot a bit. I was hoping it wouldn’t get much worse.

The split at the end of the first loop was 48:26. If I could pick the pace a little bit up, I might manage to run my 5k pace “dream goal”. The next 5k went okay and I was picking up a few spots. But around 15k, I had to realize that I was lacking a bit of endurance after the forced break in November and December. My heart rate was still up so I was working hard, but I had to slow down nonetheless. In the soft snow I couldn’t find a stable footing, so I also think that I was lacking the strength necessary for a solid pace. At least I had something else to think about than the blisters ..

It was a bit frustrating to be overtaken a few times, and the last hill was really hard. My dream-time goal was getting quite unrealistic, but I wanted to keep my spot in the rankings. I ended up in 70th place with a time of 1:37:34 (by my watch, the official time is 1:38:17 – don’t know where the big difference came from). Comparing some other people’s times between last year and this year, the course was 5-8 minutes slower with all the snow. That’s still a bit away form last year’s 1:23, but I had done the best I could today, and that’s all you can ask for. I’m happy to have run a pretty solid first race after my injury.

Hopefully, the snow will melt away soon so I can get back to some decent training condition. The weather report, however, says different, the prediction calls for freezing cold at least until next weekend. Not a chance to ride outside for now …

Getting Ready for Lümmellauf

On Sunday, I’ll have my first race of this year, “Lümmellauf” (literally “Oaf Run”), a cross country run of 19.3 km.

Photo by cran304

First, about the picture .. yes, it’s a sausage and it’s related to the race: Somebody makes a special batch of sausages (for the US people: hot dogs) also called “Lümmel” which is given out to all participants after the race. A pretty good test for your stomach, but it feels pretty good to get something warm ..

This is usually the first race of the year. The course itself is really pretty, mostly off-road (except for the immediate start/finish area) but wide enough to be able to run with a large group – but usually after the first few ks everyone runs on his/her own … They offer a lot of different distances – 1k and 2k for the younger ones, then a 5k (5300m – one short loop), a 10k (9700m – a longer loop) and 20k (19300m – two longer loops).

In the past, this has been a pretty good gauge of where I was after the Christmas-“diet” and some initial build-up. When running the 9.7k you got a time you could shoot for in an 10k later in the season, and the average pace in the 19.3k was something you could hold for a 1/2 marathon a bit later on. Last year I managed to run a 1:23:42, a 4:20 per k average speed. This would correspond to a 1:31:25 half marathon – pretty close to my PR.

This year, things are a bit different. First, I’ve been injured and didn’t train much in November and December. Second, it’s been really cold and we have a ton of snow on the ground. So I absolutely don’t have any idea of what is possible, especially not having had a look at the conditions on the course.

So I’m being really conservative and assume a 5:15/k pace – which would be a 1h41. Anything faster would be nice, I’m hoping for a pace under 5min/k which would be under 1:36:30. But this is just guessing.

What I’m really looking forward is to meet a couple of running and triathlon buddies. Hopefully I’ll not be too spent to link up with a few people …

Dashing through the snow …

Had a lot of fun on a winter run tonight.

As noted in an earlier blog post, we don’t usually have a lot of snow in Northern Germany. As far as I can remember, we didn’t have this much snow for so long since 1978/79 (which was a legendary winter for the “snow catastrophe” were power went down and villages couldn’t be reached for days).

In fact it is the first road closure for snow that I can remember. Along a route I run on quite often, there was suddenly a barrier …

As you can see, some cars had driven around it, but a short while later had to turn around as a huge snow drift of more than a meter high totally blocked the road:

The snow plow had tried to clear the drift, but had given up:

 

I climbed over it, sometimes sinking in up to  my knees (but the snow was quite solid) and ran on in my loop. It was sometimes a bit tricky to run in the high snow, but even running on roads that were cleared was tricky:

There was a lot of snow even in the cleared sections, so it was like running in soft sand. It was exhausting and I was running about a minute per k slower than normal, but I had a total blast. Some passing motorists must have wondered about my mental state ..

Winter Running

Had a great run through snowy trails today …

Photo by David Clow

This year’s winter is pretty full-on here in Germany. Typically, we get a handful of days where it snows, but usually the snow is gone after a few days because it’s too warm. This year, it’s been pretty cold, so the snow has accumulated. Currently, we have about 10cm (4 inches) of snow on the ground, but because there is quite a bit of wind, it gets moved around a bit and accumulates in protected areas. Also means we have to shovel snow three times a day …

Nonetheless, it’s quite nice to go out for a run. Today, I went for a longish run with one of my cousins. We’re going to run a race next week (more on that in my next post), so he wanted to have a nice long run together with me to talk about the race and also try out his new Polar HRM.

We ended up going for almost 1h 15minutes, my longest and most solid run since my injury. The snow was pretty fresh and crunchy, so we had good traction. At times it was pretty windy and cold, but we ran on a nice route where we were mostly covered in the forest. It was really great to talk a bit, even if he was quite pooped when we got towards the end. But I felt relaxed and really good, and it felt good to be able to go for longer runs again.

My leg feels pretty solid again. Even when miss-stepping it is still very solid and shows no “looseness”. The left leg still feels a bit different than the right leg, but mostly because the range of motion between the two legs is still different. I think that the injury is completely healed, and that I have to stretch the newly formed muscle strains to be as flexible as the old ones were. But it feels like I can go back into full training mode again.

I’ll have to think a bit more about next week’s race. It’s pretty hard to figure out a realistic goal for it. I’ll write some more about it in the next days …

Weighty Issues – December Update

After my funky, injury-plagued November and December, my weight plans have suffered a bit.

Another photo by radialmoster.

Official Weigh-In January 5th

• Weight: 89,3kg
• Body Fat: 18,3%

This means that I have gained about three pounds since the end of October and that I can pretty much say good-bye to my original weight plans for this summer’s racing.

Updated Plan

While this setback is quite frustrating, other than time not much is lost. But it is important that I get back on track now. Now that my knee is almost back to normal and I can do some decent training again, it’s still quite realistic to reach my best Ironman racing weight ever (which was sub-85kg in 2007). But if I want to do that, I really have to “be good”. Good thing is that my wife and I have decided on a joint effort to eat well and healthy.

Rather than focus only on “loosing weight”, here’s a couple of secondary, but more specific goals:

• Drink more water (rather than coffee/latte)
• Portion control (one plate of pasta should be enough)
• Eat more fruit and vegetables
• No pigging out, try to go zero on sweets, cake & chocolate (one white chocolate santa claus is left and will survive till my IM in July!)
• Try to follow a modified weight watchers plan at least 6 out of 7 days per week (modified with regards to increased training activity which ww does not really adapt to very well, so some more “good” carbs before/during/after sessions)

I hope that this will allow me to drop one kg per month. At the start hopefully a bit more, so my goal for end of January is to get under 88kg again. I hope that I can manage that! I’ll keep you posted …

First sessions for 2010

Before I get started, I’d like to wish all readers of my blog (all two of them :-)) a Happy New Year!

Photo by askpang

The year started with a major cleanup of our basement. Three more or less full days of sorting stuff, putting lights into previously dark rooms, rearranging shelves, carrying stuff around .. pretty exhausting, but not exactly cross training sessions. Now we’re almost done, and that was certainly a good start of the year.

I also managed to get two nice relaxing training sessions in. Yesterday I took my bike for an easy 50 minute ride. It was really cold, and after I returned home it started to snow again. Now every street is covered with some slush .. not exactly great to ride, but it doesn’t look as if it’s going to melt away soon. So after the sun came out today, I went for the first run session of the year. My knee felt much better than the last time, and I finished without any pain after 30 minutes. This evening I don’t have any soreness, so I’m hoping that my knee is almost back to normal and I can ramp up the training again. If I feel good tomorrow morning, I’ll go for another run .. I hope I’m going to be okay after that! I’ll keep you posted …