Kiel Half Marathon: Are you Ready?

Tomorrow (Saturday), I’m going to race the Half Marathon Kiel.

The best photo I could find is a summer picture (even though my last posts were complaints about the bad winter weather):

Photo by Drbashir117 from Wikipedia Commons

The race is run on the western side of the “Kieler Förde” (on the left side of the picture). Usually, it is a 10.5k loop, but because of the winter weather, it had to be shortened to 7k, so instead of two loops we’ll run three.

With all the winter weather, I have no idea what will be possible for me and I’m not really ready for racing. Back in November I was hoping I’d be a able to run close to my PR (1.31h), but that is out of the question. My last race (19,6k Lümmellauf in January) is six weeks ago, and I was able to run a bit slower than 5min/k average. Even though I didn’t manage to do any longer runs, I hope to be able to be a bit quicker. That would be under 1h45. This would require at least half-way decent weather, no icy roads and not any new snow. (The weather report predicts 4°C – about 40°F – and rainy weather, so that should be okay.)

I hope to be able to run a bit faster, but as in my last race I had problems towards the end, I know I have to be conservative. I think I’ll start the first loop with a rough target HR of about 150 (Lümmellauf average was 155) and see what pace that corresponds to. If that feels okay, maybe I can pick up the pace and HR a bit in the next two loops. It would be great if that works out to 7k loops of 35, 34, and 33 minutes and a total time of 1:42. If I even manage to go under 1:40, I’d be real happy. As I said, I have no idea of where I am. At least I’ll be able to run in my lighter shoes for the first time this year. With all the snow, I didn’t do any faster stuff since mid-November …

Snowshoeing as Winter Cross Training

With all the snow we currently have here in Northern Germany, I was getting quite frustrated with running on ice or in deep snow. After asking a bit around, I got a lot of suggestions for snowshoeing. If you google for ‘training snowshoe’ you’ll find a couple of good articles (such as this Owner’s Manual from Running Times).

So I went onto Amazon and ordered a relatively cheap pair of snowshoes:

After I paid for the overnight service, I could try them the next day.

At first they felt really strange, but that went away really quick and walking came quite naturally. It maybe took me 10 minutes after which running felt quite normal.

Here are my main takeaways from my sessions:

• Apart from having to lift your feet a bit higher, you don’t have to alter your regular stride. (And the extra lift may be a good drill for combating the “Ironman shuffle”.) The pace is maybe 1 min/k (about 90 seconds per mile) slower compared to “regular” running.
• Running on “paved” trails (i.e. where a few people have already walked or skied) feels really good. You have excellent traction even on packed snow or ice.
• Running in deep snow is really hard and only possible for short distances. You still sink in a bit (maybe that’s different for ’larger’ sizes), and walking was sufficient for me to lift my HR.
• It’s a great chance to try some new paths and just go “cross country”.
• It’s tricky to go by distance, it’s better to go by time. I’ve done a few sessions of about 1 hour, and they felt pretty similar to regular running.
• You have to keep attention to the ground, so running in the dark is not really an option.

All in all, it was a nice change from regular running and I really enjoyed snowshoeing.

Of course, now that I have an alternative, it has started to get a bit warmer and some of the snow is melting away. I just hope I can do some decent faster sessions soon …

Frustrated with Winter Running

I went out for a long run in the winter weather. I picked a nice route that usually takes me about 1h45. With all the snow, this time it took me almost 2h30.

When I started, I used some little side streets. Most of the snow had been cleared, but the remaining snow had melted and refroze. So basically I was running on a sheet of ice:

It was quite slippery and I had to really focus on not loosing my footing.

When I went “off-road”, I ran in the snow along a lake:

It was beautiful, but not really good running conditions.It got more and more tricky when I entered the forest. I was one of the first along the path and with every step I sank knee-deep into the snow. I couldn’t really run any more: Pretty soon after that the terrain became completely impassable and I had to take a detour. A side road was cleared, but you can see from the picture how much snow we’re having:

(The top of the fence you can see is about breast-high.)

After that I again had to run through tricky forest trails and fought my way through snowdrifts and deep snow where I was the first one to pass through.

It was nice to be out for a long run, but I’m not sure about the training benefits. My main problem is that all the running is so slow it is probably not specific enough. I’d really like to be able to bang out a nice speed session and run really fast for a bit.

But right now I only have the following choices:

1. Run in deep snow
2. Run on icy side streets
3. Run on cleared main roads (and risk being run over by all the traffic)

The weather report does not look like the snow will melt in the next week or two. So what to do in the meantime? I’m open to any ideas that would help me get a bit faster …

Weighty Issues – January 2010 Update

Photo by Like_the_Grand_Canyon

I’m already a bit late for my “weighty issues” update. So without further ado, here are the results from February 1st:

• weight 88,3 kg (goal was around 88kg)
• body fat 17,9 (not much movement here)

These numbers are okay, and I think from the sheer numbers I am back on track. One thing that I’m noticing is that my waist seems to be getting thinner, my belt is almost ready for the next hole. However, my weight fluctuates a lot from day to day, so it’s hard to be sure where I am exactly. But at least I’m moving in the right direction, even if I’m not being totally perfect.

Now the tricky part starts .. I’m about where I was for the last two years of racing, and I want to go beyond that. So the next kgs are important, but they will be hard, too. Especially with all the things going on and the weather still being bad here in Northern Germany. But I’d like to get around 87kg by the end of February.

One little note on the picture: It’s a chocolate Santa, similar to the one sitting next to my printer as a reminder to not eat too many sweets. It’s been working quite well, except for the occasional chocolate. One of my problems is that I can’t eat just one piece when I opened a package …