Running Hochbrückenlauf and Talking to a Doctor about my Knee

Last Sunday, I ran the Hochbrückenlauf in Kiel. It is one of my favorite races – it’s a great course, it’s a hard race that you can’t fake, and it’s usually right on the border between winter and spring.

This year did not disappoint. The weather turned nice the week before the race – at least during the day. It was still freezing during the night, so I still didn’t manage to run in my shorts during the week. But Sunday morning turned out nice and sunny, so I was finally able to ditch the long tights for the race.

As usual, I really enjoyed myself during the race. I was running a pretty solid, hard pace across the whole distance. As usual, I was worried if I could hold the pace all the way, but I managed to eat and drink in small portions without my stomach getting upset, so that was really encouraging. When  I hit the big hill at the bridge, I slowed down a bit on the uphills, but I recovered quickly and was able to run in strong. My average pace was around 4.45/k the whole way. I ended up with a 2.17 – which was a bit disappointing at first, as the last few k-markers seemed to indicate that I would be around 2.15. But they probably were a bit off (the Garmin pace kept steady), so all is well. If I was able to run that pace in my marathon, it would mean a 3.22 – a 7 minute PR, but I would like to be able to be another 3 minutes quicker and post at least a 3.19. I’ve got eight more weeks of training to get there!

My Knee acting up again

One of the things that may stop me in my training is my knee. I’ve felt another “twinge” Saturday morning, but it wasn’t any problem in my Sunday race. Afterwards however, it didn’t feel to good – some tightness, probably due to the swelling. Sitting at a desk on Monday didn’t help, so I quickly dashed in to the doctor. He was able to calm me down a lot. Here’s what he told me:

• My knee has some instability due to the torn PCL from a few years ago.
• Muscularly I’m fine, that’s why running is not a problem.
• As long as my “episodes” are so far apart (and I can still complete an Ironman), I shouldn’t worry about it.
• If it gets more frequent or I stop doing things because it hurts my knee, then we should think about some therapy and/or surgery.
• In the meantime, when I feel a “twinge”, I should aggressively take some ibuprofen – not for the pain, but in order to keep the swelling to a minimum.

In other words – nothing to worry about for now. Again, he was able to make me feel a lot better …

Ready for my next race: Hochbrückenlauf 2011

Tomorrow, I’m going to run my next race: Hochbrückenlauf 2011, a 29.2k race through some beautiful countryside, and also a pretty hard test race.

Recovery after Husum Marathon

It is almost three weeks since I raced the Husum Marathon. I’m not really sure if I am properly recovered from this race, just this last Tuesday I didn’t feel like running at all (so I took the evening off). That may have had as much to do with stress at work, so I tried to take things a bit easier at work (or rather more focused on the important things and not be fazed by the little stuff). It helped, and I was able to do some decent training in the last few days and feel okay for tomorrow.

But you never know until you race, so I may be in for a rude surprise …

Goals for the Race

My best times in this race are a 2:19 and a 2:20, around a 4:45/k pace. Usually, this race is the last test race before my spring Marathon, and I try to run it at Marathon goal pace or a little bit quicker. My goal time for this year (a 3.20h) would be a 4:42/k, so my goal should be a decent PR for Hochbrückenlauf, possibly around 2.15.

However, this year (with my Marathon being at the end of May instead of April) I’m more toward the start of my focused Marathon prep than the end of it. So I’m not sure if that goal is reasonable, but I’m willing to give it a try to run a PR.

So I’m going to start at about a 4:45/k pace and see how that feels. If I manage to eat and drink at that pace, I’ll try to increase the pace a little bit after about 8k (when the course is going to flatten out). I’ll try to relax and eat until around 20k, as the 23k mark is under this bridge:

while 24k is on the bridge and there is a little hill in between ..

I hope I can keep things together in the seemingly never ending 5k after the bridge. As long as I’m not completely falling apart, I think I’ll be happy, and I should be able to post a decent time.

Also, this will probably be the first run for this year that I’ll be running in shorts .. this is what the weather report looks like:

Cold in the morning, but sunny and warmer during the day.

I just hope to make it to the start in time, this night we’re going to switch to daylight saving, and last time the iPhone alarms weren’t working for a few days. I guess I’ll need a backup alarm clock for tonight!

Husum Marathon – A great “long run”

The Husum “Winter Marathon” had a serious problem this year. Usually, you have to live with the harshest conditions you can get in Northern Germany: A lot of wind, cold temperatures, rain or snow, sometimes a lot of it. (In past years, participants had to run on uncleared bike paths through 10 inches of snow.) This year, conditions were very favorable: A cold, clear night with freezing temperatures had given way to a sunny day with blue skies and nice temperatures (at least for early March – about 5°C or about 40°F). Except for a stiff wind on the way out, you couldn’t have asked for nicer weather.

Pre Race Goals

I had signed up for this race in order to motivate me for some longer runs in the winter months. I had managed to get some solid training in, but not quite the volume I had in mind. I managed a few longer runs of up to 25k at a decent pace, but I was quite skeptic about my endurance. So my goals were clear: Run a decent paced long run, make sure I eat and drink enough not to run into too many problems in the second half, and arrive at 30k in shape to be able to run under 3:50 if possible. I was in for a big surprise!

First Half

After the start we got a pretty stiff headwind, so I made sure to run at the end of a larger group that was going at a decent pace. We were running along at about a 5:25/k pace which felt totally effortless. I had to remind myself to hold back and run steady until the 30k mark. I managed to eat and drink something every 15 to 20 minutes without any problems, and the run went along without anything happening except for maybe a short bio break after which I easily ran back to the group.

Faster than anticipated we reached the half way mark – 1:53:23, a 5.22/k at an average heart rate of 133 – probably the easiest half marathon I had ever run. I was really surprised how well I was holding up, and in a great position to run around a 3:45. My goals started changing a bit …

Second Half

Slowly, I was giving myself a few extra beats of HR to increase my pace – to 5:15, to 5:10. The kilometers were flying by and when I hit the 30k mark, I was at 2:41 and I was still feeling really good. I could just continue, or I could try to speed up and see what was possible. It would require a clearly sub 5-minute-pace to get under 3:40 – clearly a stretch at this point of the season. Nonetheless, I wanted to give it a try but without detonating. It felt good to increase the pace some more, but whenever there was a slight hill, I struggled and it was clear that I was running close to the pace that was possible for me. That pace was hovering around 5:00/k – some k’s were a little bit faster, some were a bit slower. At the last aid station, I made sure to drink a few sips of Coke and hoped that would give me some extra boost – but all that was possible was just holding the pace The last k hurt (as usual in a marathon), and I ended up coming in at 3:42:00 on my watch and an official 3:42:53 (which includes some pit stops that the GPS watch took out). I’m really happy with that result, it was my third or fourth fastest marathon ever.

Looking forward

The Husum marathon is a really good sign for my A-race this season, the Hamburg Marathon at the end of May. My goal is to PR (currently 3:29), possibly dip under the Boston qualifier time of 3:20.

That is still quite a bit faster than Husum. I could have run a bit quicker, but probably not more than a few minutes – so I still have to improve by 15 to 20 minutes – about 20 to 30 seconds per k quicker than in Husum.

There will have to be some serious training to achieve this:

• long runs – my endurance already seems to be pretty good, but obviously endurance is the main thing for a marathon
• marathon pace tempo runs – the pace I ran in Husum felt comfortable, but running a 4:45/k to 4:30/k pace is a different story. I’ll have to do some more runs at that pace to be able to run this pace in a relaxed fashion
• weight – loosing a few more kgs will make things easier for the big race and I have to get back to working at it some more

I hope I can get a lot done in the next few months. But first, recovery is the most important thing, so for the next two weeks I’m going to take things easier. I’ll probably do a few more easy runs with our little dog, he enjoys it a lot and the pace is quite relaxed with him. Once I’m recovered, I’ve got a few more tune-up races lined up ….

Kiel Halbmarathon: First 2011 Race

This Saturday, I ran my first 2011 race, the half marathon in Kiel.

The race

It was a nice sunny day, but it was still pretty cold and there was some westerly wind that made running into it a bit uncomfortable.

The first few k (with the wind) felt really easy. I briefly debated weather I should try to go a bit faster, but quickly managed to hold back a bit. For the first loop of 10.5k, I was running at the faster end of my goal pace of 4:30/k. If I managed to hold that pace, I’d be able to come in at under 1:35h.

However, during the second loop I was running into some issues and holding the pace was getting harder and harder. At the 15k mark, I decided to walk a few steps and get some Coke down for some extra energy. But that didn’t last too long, into the wind my pace dropped to around 4:45/k and I came in at just under 1:37 – a bit disappointed, still a pretty good result considering I was not willing to dig really deep for finish just a few seconds faster.

Looking forward

After all, my next race is just a scant week later, and it’s a full marathon! So this week is mainly easy sessions of 30 minute runs in order to recover and hopefully arrive at the start line rested and ready for a nice long run. My planned pace is about a full minute slower than for my half marathon, and I hope that this will enable me to run the full distance (save for a few steps at the aid stations). A 3:55 full marathon will be more than okay at this time of the year – if I manage that I’ll be getting more and more optimistic for my May marathon in Hamburg. For now, I’m feeling okay and hope that I manage to get some extra hours of sleep in during this week. It’ll be interesting to see how I’ll feel by Friday.

Upcoming Races: Kiel Halbmarathon and Husum Marathon

After almost two months of 2011, it is almost time for some more races.

The races I have lined up are:

• Half Marathon in Kiel on February 26th
  The plan for this race is to have a good long tempo run, if possible a bit faster than the time I want to run my spring marathon. The dream goal for that would be a 3:15, which would require a 4:36/k average. A more reasonable but still ambitious goal is a 3:20 – a 4:44/k average. So I’ll see where I end up running, with a goal time of under 1:40, preferably under 1:37.
• Marathon in Husum on March 5th
  This will be mainly a long run, around my new long run pace of 5:30, which would translate to a sub 4h marathon.

The tricky thing will be the recovery between the two races .. hopefully my half marathon effort will not be so high as to impede my ability to run a full marathon a week later. That is one reason why I’m not going to run Kiel all out – that would definitely take too much out of me.

Training in January and February

I’m quite happy with the way my training has turned out since X-mas. I’ve put in some decent volume at a good clip, and I’ve managed a few solid long runs. Having said that, I’m still short of any record levels and my longest run has been 25k – obviously too short for a really solid marathon race. But the marathon is just planned as a long run, and I should be in good shape if I manage to start easily and eat and drink decently. Still, it’ll be interesting to see how the race is going to turn out – there are quite a few things that might go wrong.

One thing that should be okay is the weather. Husum is quite famous for adverse weather conditions. Last year they’ve had quite a lot of fresh snow:

In some previous years they’ve had a big storm come through, but the predictions for this year look quite okay – cold, but not any snow. I’ll know better where I stand after the next two weeks! Hopefully I’ve got a good base to build on before starting my build-up for Hamburg at the end of May.

More on Triathlon Ratings

Just a quick note .. I've published the first results on my idea of a Triathlon Rating. In order to keep this separate from my training blog, I've set up a new blog at trirating.smartersoftware.de. Please have a look there to find out who's the top rated athlete at the moment and which IMHawaii race was the slowest in the last years ...

Ending 2010 and Planning 2011

For me, a year ends well with a race .. so I had signed up for the 10.2k
“Silvesterlauf” (New Years Eve Run) in Mölln. I had run there a few years ago (I think it was 2007), and it was a great way to end a year and start the new one.

This year was no different, even if the weather was quite tricky. It had snowed a lot over Christmas (about 10 to 15 inches or 20 to 30 cm), so it was going to be a winter run. But it was getting a bit warmer towards race day, so the snow was getting soft and mushy – not exactly great running conditions. Nonetheless, the sun was out and I decided to make the best of it. Based on the conditions, it was clear that I couldn’t expect a great time, but I wanted to run a hard race and see what was possible.

It turned out that not a lot was possible for me that day. As usually, I started a bit back and was overtaking some people after the start and in the first few k. When there was enough space to run, I tried to pick up the pace a bit, but with the bad footing I couldn’t get much faster without feeling really slippery. Towards the middle, I tried again to distance some people that I had overtaken earlier, but that backfired and I was even moving backwards in the field, not being able to hold the pace I was going. Also, the deep snow and slush was really getting to me. I finished in just under 49 minutes, probably the fastest that was possible for me on that day.

Plans for 2011

I was going quite a bit back and forth to come up with a decent plan for 2011. An Ironman race is not in the cards right now. I was looking for a longer running race, but all potential races such as Rennsteig just didn’t work (Tina will only have a few open weekends, and we’ll leave on an early vacation this year). So I finally settled on the following:

• run Hamburg Marathon (end of May)
  From a logistics viewpoint, this is the simplest race for me to do: Pick up my race number after work on Thursday before the race, then take the train to Hamburg on Sunday morning. No need for a trip or a hotel.
  My goal for this year is to break my PR of 3:29 – possibly try to get a Boston qualifier time of sub 3:20 (which will be a stretch). I will have to do some decent training for this, but hopefully not quite as time consuming as training for an IM.
• run a fast half marathon in the training leading up to Hamburg
  I’ve been thinking for a while about a sub 1:30 half marathon, and if my training for Hamburg goes well, I should be able to get close to this barrier. Not sure which race fits best, I’m looking at a race in early April in Neumünster which may be a good fit.
• run another marathon earlier in the year (probably Kiel or Husum early March)
  In order to collect some more marathons and to make sure I’m focusing on longer training in the winter months, another marathon sounds like a good idea to me. Not even close to PR, just complete it under 4 hours and treat it as a really long training run. I should be able to recover relatively fast from it before the focused marathon training for Hamburg starts.
• loose weight and race light in Hamburg
  In the last years, I’ve always tried to get my weight down for my main race and haven’t had much success. My best was in 2007, when I raced at 85kg. The last years I was more around 88 to 89kg, which is where I am currently at. It would be good to get down to 85kg again, and I’m sure that this would make PR’ing a little easier. Also something to focus on until my first marathon for this season.

Enough to do in the next few months .. hopefully I’ll manage to reach some goals – I’ll keep you posted!