EnduranceNut

Running Hochbrückenlauf and Talking to a Doctor about my Knee

2011-04-01T22:31:00.001+02:00

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

2011-03-26T16:26:00.001+01:00

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”

2011-03-08T20:27:00.001+01:00

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

2011-02-28T22:20:00.001+01:00

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

2011-02-22T22:49:00.001+01:00

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

2011-01-14T00:44:00.003+01:00

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

2011-01-09T13:21:00.001+01:00

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!

Triathlon Rating

2010-12-10T23:11:00.004+01:00

Usually this blog is about my own training and races … this entry is a little bit different but still very much focused on trathlon. I’d be happy to receive feedback on my thoughts, please leave a comment!

Macca’s IMTalk Interview

I’m a few weeks back in listening to my podcasts, so it wasn’t until Friday that I listened to IMTalk’s podcast interview with IM Hawaii winner Chris McCormack. A great, long interview – if you haven’t listened to it yet, you can find it here.

One of the things Macca mentioned started me thinking. I don’t have the exact words, but his point was that US races were easy to win but all the press was focusing on. Races in Europe (even the high profile ones) were much harder and also had a much bigger depth than the US races. One of his examples was Marino Vanhoenacker’s 7:52 in Austria – all this got in the US was a “Austria is a fast course” but not much more, so he wasn’t really on most people’s list for delivering a good performance in Hawaii. My idea at this point: There should be a way to rank the relative performances of athletes in different races.

Rating in Chess

When I was younger, I was quite a serious chess player. Chess has a great scoring system to compare the strengths of the different players, see this wikipedia article on the Elo Rating System (named after Prof. Arpard Elo, who developed the mathematical foundation). The score in chess in an artificial number, but it still was quite meaningful in comparing different players.

Known Scoring Systems in Triathlon

In triathlon, the only scoring systems I know are points based. In each race, there is a certain numbers of points to win, usually based on placing. Races are usually in a tiered system, i.e. better tiers dish out more points.

The “official” systems I’m aware of is the Pro qualifying points race for IM Hawaii by WTC and the points system for determining the ITU olympic distance world champion. I’ve also found the site triathlonranking.com that does a scoring of long distance racers. I’m not aware of any official status of this site, it seems to be a portfolio site by Wim De Doncker, a relatively well known Belgian triathlete who’s now also working as a freelance web designer. It’s also not completely up to date.

Problems with Points based systems

A points based system is pretty easy to set up, but I see a number of drawbacks:

Frequent racers have an advantage over athletes that start less often.
A good example is Craig Alexander – his only IM race is Hawaii which does not give him a lot of chances to earn points.
It is very hard for a point based system to "fairly” reflect the strength of the field.
The points you get depend a lot on who also shows up on race day.
A points system does not offer a way to compare different courses.
An example for such a system would be golf’s course rating. Almost all golf courses have a “par” score of 72. A course rating of 71 shows that this course is two shots easier than a course with a rating of 73 (for more, see another wikipedia article).
A point system is not predictive.
Just because you have x points, it does not mean you should be able to race in y time.

Ideas for a Triathlon Rating System

Compared to chess, triathlon has a natural way of scoring: your finishing time! Therefore, a better ranking system would have to incorporate these main ideas:

an athlete’s rating should be his finishing time – this would naturally lead to different ratings based on race distance (Olympic, Half IM, IM-distance) – also makes a rating automatically predictive
courses should be rated as well – for example by comparing finishing times for the same athlete on different courses you could say that course x is by 15 minutes harder than course y
comparing expected and actual results by the athlete’s in a specific race would also allow you to determine if it was a hard year (e.g. in Hawaii a year with heat and strong winds) or an easier one and therefore allow you to compare different year’s results on the same course

Obviously, there are quite some tricky issues to resolve before this can be workable, but I think that the result can be quite interesting. I know that there is some previous work by Neil Hammond, but his main focus was on picking the race that would give you the best chance for qualification (ending in 2007 it’s also not quite up to date).

I think this is something interesting to look into. Does anyone know of anything similar to this? Any other comments or ideas? Also, if anyone knows of a database with decent quality race results, please give me a shout! Thanks.

Last under two hours .. or first over?

2010-12-03T00:03:00.001+01:00

My winter race in Ratzeburg went really well. Depending on how you look at it, I just achieved my goal or missed it by just so much. But let’s start at the start …

.. or the days before the race. I didn’t do much training in the week before the race. I was a bit worried that I’d be too rested, so I made sure to get in a little run on Saturday. I got all the little aches and niggles that are typical for a taper – a little cramping while swimming on Thursday, some weird aches in my knee, but nothing out of order. My wife and I took some time looking around for a new kitchen, so I didn’t have too much of a chance to chill out on Saturday.

It had gotten really cold in the days, and there was a bit of snow on the ground. As there was not enough time for the ground to really freeze solid, there was a good chance for good racing conditions. In fact, the sun came out right before the 11am start, there was hardly any wind – perfect conditions for a winter race.

I took my time to warm up and had to hurry a bit to make it to start in time. Towards the start line it was getting quite crowded, so I was a bit back and started my watch when I crossed the line. This difference would prove to be important later. As I wanted to run a fast race, I moved forward quickly and tried to get a decent position in the first wider section before the course enters the forest. There were still some slower people to overtake, but all in all I had open enough space to run the pace I wanted.

I wanted to run around a 4:35 pace, and managed to hit that pretty well even in the hillier sections in the first 5k. However, I was running pretty hard, and my HR was a bit higher than what I thought would be possible for a 26k race. But I wanted to give it a try in order to have a shot at running under 2 hours. Once the first hills were over, I managed to run an even pace right where I wanted to run at. I even managed to get a few calories down, and it seemed to have a good effect on me. I was really worried that I would not be able to hold that pace until the end, but wanted to hold on as long as possible. Looking back, this is pretty much how you want to run a half marathon – run just another 1k at goal pace until you reach the finish line.

My split at 13k was just a bit over 59 minutes, so if I managed to hold my pace 2 hours should be possible. But that was a big “if”. Around the 18k mark, I was running into problems. Some more calories helped for a bit, but the effect wore off pretty soon and I was moving backwards in the field. I had made some good time and hoped that I had a big enough buffer for the final hills. I fell a bit apart when I hit the hills and walked on the steeper sections to preserve my last energy.

It was going to be really close. I knew the last k would be downhill and probably a good place to make up some more time, but I was running on fumes. Lots of grunting on the downhills (legs hurting!) and going as fast as possible – by my watch I would just make it under two hours. When I entered the finish chute and saw the official race clock, I knew I was right on the edge. The last seconds ticked down, and I still wasn’t home. When I finally made it, the official clock was at 2:00:03, but my own watch (remember I started it a bit later when crossing the start line?) said it was 1:59:55.

So, depending on how you want to see things, I was either the last one under 2 hours – or the first one over it. Regardless, this is a very big PR for the course – around 10 minutes faster than my previous best. True, I put a much bigger focus on this race than in previous years when I was just getting back into training after my fall break in October. But the time was still much better than what I thought I might be able to do and I’m really pumped about it. I thought that running really fast requires more than I was ready to give at this point (weight, volume, focus etc.). Now that Ratzeburg has gone well, I’m starting to think that I may have a fast marathon in me in 2011. Time to get my plan together …

One week to go before my Winter Race in Ratzeburg

2010-11-22T21:59:00.001+01:00

By now it is less than week before my big winter race, a 26k trail run around the lake at Ratzeburg (Infos at http://rsv-triathlon.de/Adventslauf/index.htm).

Training

My training has been going okay. I managed to do a few longer runs (20k, 29k) and a nice long tempo run (14k of marathon pace within a 20k run), but my overall training volume has not been that high, most of the weeks were around 35 to 40k. Overall, I think I made a lot of progress (and I haven’t been sick), but still not quite the training I wanted to do.

Weight

The big thing that has changed was my weight. After my wife’s birthday, we went on a pretty strict diet. I tried to cut back on carbs and eat as much fruit and veggies as possible. This worked really well, I lost a lot of weight – went down from almost 92kg to under 88kg within four weeks!. So now I am at the lowest I’ve probably been since late 2007 and I hope to get down even more within the next few weeks (tricky around Christmas) and months. I felt okay on my runs, and was really surprised with my first swim since more than a month which went really good even in the faster parts.

Expectations

I’m not really sure of what is possible in Ratzeburg – basically, that is what makes racing fun. I was hoping to be able to go under 2 hours (which would be a 4:35/k average pace), but I’m not sure that that is a pace I’m able to run on the tough Ratzeburg course. I’m pretty sure that I can PR the course (2:09 something, just under 5 min/k pace), and I think I should be able to get at least under 2:05 (4:47 pace). I’m really looking forward to how fast I can go.

I just hope that the weather will not turn out to be a deciding factor. We’ve had pretty miserable weather with lots of rain and wind in the last days – in my nearby forest most trails are impassable. After my half marathon in Alstertal I’m looking forward to another muddy trail run (especially in the ups and downs in Ratzeburg). It’s supposed to get colder in the next days and usually this means it’ll get a bit dryer. I hope that this will help to have good racing conditions – but as this is one thing I don’t have any influence in, it’s not worthwhile to spend too much energy thinking about it. I just have to have the gloves available if it turns really cold.

Fall Races

2010-10-30T10:04:00.000+02:00

I haven’t updated my blog for a while,so this will be an update on my training and races since Mid-September.

Alstertal Half-Marathon (September 26th)

I managed to get some regular training in, but did not do any long runs (longest run was about 1h 15min). So obviously, I could not expect that much from this race. I was hoping to get close to my best time on that pretty hilly course which was just under 1h40.

The day of the race the weather was pretty horrible. It was raining hard and the course which is run on walking trails along the river Alster, was a muddy mess. It wasn’t too cold (so running in shorts was still okay), but you were drenched as soon as you went outside and your legs were muddy at the 1k mark.

The race itself went okay. I was running around the pace required to run under 1h40, but in the second half of the race I just couldn’t find the extra 1% of pace that I would have needed. Still, I was happy with my 1:40:44. I made sure to get on warm clothes afterwards and got home quickly.

Lübeck Citylauf (11.3k – October 10th)

I was pretty spent after the race. I managed to do some easy training, but within a week I had a bit of a flu, felt horrible and spent some days in bed to recover. By Friday before the Citylauf I felt okay enough to go on a very easy 5k run which didn’t feel all too good. I also hurt my knee again – very lightly this time, but I still could feel it when walking. But as my cousin Kai was to run this race as a prep for his upcoming first half-marathon race, I wanted to go to the race and warm up with him. I felt okay then, so I decided to run the race but start easy and then see how the race progressed.

I made sure to start at the back of the field and then make my way forward. I still felt my knee a little bit, but I wasn’t that bad and got better after a while. I managed to pick up my pace and was running really good considering that I spent a few days in bed not too long ago. Towards the end I was running 4:30 pace and was overtaking people all the time. I ran a whole lot slower than last year (about 4 minutes), but considering I was in bed just a few days ago, I was really happy with a solid run.

Lübeck Half-Marathon (October 24th)

After the Citylauf, it was two more weeks to the Half-Marathon. I wanted to do one longer tempo session with my cousin Kai to get him ready for his first Half. In order to allow him some recovery time before then, we had decided on Wednesday for the run. First, we did some easy 8k with his wife to warm up and get some k’s into the legs. Then, we did another 10k that also included 4k at his Half-Marathon pace, a little recovery and then another 1k at Half-Marathon and 500m at a little faster pace. I felt really good the whole time and Kai was happy that he was able to complete this session without too much trouble. I also did another 1h30 trail run, but that was an easier run just to be on my feet for a longer time and not trash myself before the race.

The day of the race, we had some bad weather again. But as the race would be run on streets, it at least wouldn’t be muddy. We watched the start of the Marathon (30 minutes before us) in pouring rain. We then went on to take off our warm-up clothes, had a short discussion weather to run in short or not and dropped off our bags when the rain stopped. It started again right after we had finished our races, but during the race it was dry and great to run.

The story of my race is pretty much the same as for Alstertal. I had an ambitious goal of running a similar time as last year, I was doing quite well for the first half, but when I would have had to step it up, I just couldn’t. I wanted to run close to 1:35, and ended up running a 1:37:58. Not off by a lot, not a catastrophic race – but still not what I was looking for.

Goals for my next race

My next race will be the 26k race around the lake in Ratzeburg. I’m pretty confident I can PR this race (currently just under 2h10 which is a 5min/k pace) if my prep goes well. But at this point I have to really improve within the next few weeks in order to get close to the goal I had set initially (sub 2 hours). What’s missing for now?

longer runs – I’ve got to get a few longer runs (around 2 hours or longer)
get my weight down – I’ll save this for another blog post, but I really have to improve here
tempo runs – at this point I’m not “fit” enough to hold my goal pace for the duration of the race. I’ll need to run a 4:35 on a pretty hilly course, for Lübeck all I managed was a 4:38.
overall volume – I’ve had a lot of stuff going on at work, and it resulted in only 3 runs per week. I’ve got to bump this up to 4 or better 5 runs per week.

Lots of work to do, not that much time for it. It’ll be an interesting few weeks …

Getting back up to speed

2010-09-17T20:12:00.001+02:00

Last Wednesday, I did my first interval session since a long time – must have been more than half a year or so.

Photo of a Roadrunner by Nick Chill from flickr

It was not an all out session as I did the run with my cousin Kai who decided to try to run his first half marathon at the end of October and asked me for some advice.

He had run the Stadtlauf in Bad Oldesloe a few weeks ago, so I had a recent 10k time to work with. He had run about 48 minutes for a pretty accurate course, so I looked up the corresponding half marathon (about 1:50) and marathon times (about 4 hours). Of course, these times would require a good, proper training for the events to be realistic. As this would be his first half marathon, it may be a bit aggressive, but he already indicated that he would be happy with a time of under 2 hours which should be totally realistic if he does some solid training the next few weeks.

As his biggest problem is pace control (he ran a bit too fast for the first loop in Bad Oldesloe), I’ve put together a session for him to teach some pace control.

We did a 13k run that included 3 time 3k (with some easy running in between). Each of these 3k blocks would consist of 1k at marathon pace (about 5:40/k), 1k at half marathon pace (5:10 to 5:15/k) and 1k at 10k pace (about 4:50 or a bit faster). In addition to be fairly long, if the paces are too quick, you will notice in the last repeat. Of course, this session is almost impossible to do without a GPS, but my Garmin 405 made it easy to hit the proper paces.

For my own goals, these paces are about one step too low (i.e. the marathon pace would be my long run pace, his halfmarathon pace would be my marathon pace and the 10k pace would be my half marathon pace). Still, this would be the longest run for me since my IM, and also (apart from the 10k race) the first quicker session for ages.

Everything went really well. It was a bit rainy during the day but when we ran we even had a bit of sunshine. It was warm enough to run in shorts, but a stiff wind required a long sleeve. When we started, we still managed to talk a bit, but only exchanged some grunts during the intervals. With some adjustments by the Garmin, we hit the paces almost perfectly. The second 10k section was quite hard, but that was mainly due to it being uphill and into a strong headwind. We even managed to run the last 10k in 4:38 without going all out.

We were both really happy with the session. Kai has a much better understanding of what his half marathon pace feels like, and I didn’t have a problem hitting the paces and still having enough air to offer him some encouragement. I guess we’ll do this session again, and maybe also share a longer run before the half marathon.

I’ve also lined up some races for the rest of the year. While my main goal remains to loose some weight, I’m registered for the Alstertal half marathon, Lübeck Citylauf and the Lübeck Half marathon – all races I managed to do last year (and also write some short blog posts about it). If all goes well, I’ll try to run a fast Adventslauf in Ratzeburg – a race I couldn’t do last year because I hurt my knee. Hopefully, my preparation will work better this year!

Easing back into Racing

2010-09-08T22:12:00.001+02:00

Now that I’m back from vacation and starting back into some more serious running, I’m also starting to get back into some C-races. My “comeback” race was the 10k Stadtlauf (city run) in Bad Oldesloe, the town I was born at and that I still live close-by.

Last year, I was running another race just a short drive away at about the same time after my vacation as this year [insert link]. But then I didn’t have a good idea of where I stood, so I ran into severe problems in the second half after running the first part a bit too hard.

As the race in Bad Oldesloe was a three-loop course, I was hoping to avoid overpacing. But as there would be some family and friends there, it would also be difficult to properly hold back. (Last year’s race was run pretty much in anonymity as the people I knew there would be way in front of me and no friends cheering on.) I was trying to get everyone’s expectations down so there would be no confusion. In fact, I was saying that running under 50 minutes would be okay – each loop at around 16:30 (but was thinking that I should be able to run under 48 minutes – each loop at around 16 minutes). My cousin was also going to run in the race, and he would be running in the same general time range. So there might be someone to help push in the last loop …

The weather on the day was quite good for running. It was overcast and windy, but the rain that we had the days before had stopped. Not too hot, not too cold – pretty ideal for a 10k race. As the race was on Saturday afternoon, I was able to sleep in and avoid the usual race morning breakfast and hurrying to get ready in time. I took my time to warm up a bit, say hello to friends and family and lined up at the very back of the pack.

After the start, I slowly started to overtake a few people and tried to find a comfortable rhythm. It’s a bit tricky to judge the pace as there is a bit of up and down on the course, but I settled into a sub 5 minutes per k pace which didn’t feel too bad. I completed the first loop in about 15:30 and thought that I could hold that pace for the rest of the race. I was still overtaking people, and in the middle of the second loop I was reeling in my cousin (who went out too fast – a common mistake for him). I completed the second lop in another rough 15:30 and still feeling quite okay.

In the third loop I was working quite hard, but all I managed was to hold my pace for another 15:30ish loop and a 10k time of 46:36. I tried to get my speed up in the last k and was overtaking some more people, but didn’t have enough power to increase my pace. I had run a pretty even race and managed to be almost two minutes quicker than my cousin – and basically within just a little more than one loop.

I am quite happy with my race. I ran an okay time with a pretty even race and didn’t hit any particularly rough spots. For a first race, it was all you can ask for. Now I have a few weeks to train before my next race, a half marathon. Time to do some longer sessions …

Back from vacation

2010-08-20T11:43:00.001+02:00

My wife and I have just returned from our glorious summer vacation, having spent four weeks in California and Nevada: goofing around near Lake Tahoe

We really enjoyed our time, but now it’s back to work!

For me, this is also the start of a new “season”. I’ll probably build up for the 26k Ratzeburg Adventslauf at the end of November. I tried that last year, but hurting my knee and thigh stopped that. Maybe this year I manage to get all the way through.

But six weeks after IM Germany and almost no training during that time, my goals are a bit more modest at the start:

get my weight under control again
My weight was much too high for the last two to three years to achieve my goals, and a nice, relaxed vacation didn’t help either. I’m up to 92kg by now, and I’ve put up a goal of loosing 10% of my body weight until next summer (i.e. go down to 83kg). My wife and have already started our diet.
get back to regular training
After six weeks of “off-season” (even if it was the middle of summer), I just want to get back to regularly working out again. Sport/intensity is not important right now, but I’m aiming to get to at least 5 times per week of at least 30 minutes of sports. Once I’m there (and lost some weight), I can then figure out some more performance oriented goals for the rest of the year.
figure out if my knee is okay
My knee has continued to act up once in a while. There is a sharp pain, then some swelling which takes a couple of days to subside. Not much of a hindrance really, but if it happens again and again I will have to see a doctor to figure out what I can do about it. I’m pretty sure it’s not a muscle issue, probably more a little meniscus problem, so for now I’m confident I’m not putting myself at risk to just go on with my training.

For the rest of the year and also for next year, I’m not sure what A-race I’m going to pick. Initially, we thought we would have an exchange student for a year, but she bailed on us and picked another family to stay at. We may get someone else around October, but for now we don’t know. I’m pretty sure I’ll be doing Vätternrundan again (300k bike “race” in Sweden), but other than that there is nothing fixed on my schedule. But it’s probably already too late for an IM-distance race (Frankfurt and Roth have sold out in a few days), so maybe I’ll pick a running race (e.g. Hamburg marathon with a performance goal?) or just have an easier year and then figure something out for 2012. Still too early to make these decision, I’ll better get started with the second half of 2010!

Race Report IM Germany

2010-07-10T21:10:00.001+02:00

On July 4th, 2010, I raced my fourth IM-distance race. Even if things did not quite go as hoped for, it was still a great experience.

Race week

For my last race, the week before the race was hectic and stressful, and I entered the race quite frazzled. Physically, I might have been a bit rested, but mentally I was exhausted.

This time, I tried to take as much rest as possible. I had to finish some things for work, and I made sure to have enough time for that to finish on Wednesday. This allowed me to take Thursday and Friday off, sleep in, relax and pack my things. It would be getting really hot for the weekend, but I was able to put in a last long wetsuit swim on Thursday.

As my wife had to teach on Friday, we wouldn’t be able to drive down to Frankfurt before Friday and I would miss the race briefing. I knew a friend of mine would also be racing, so I phoned him with some questions I still had about the race. We talked them over and I was able to firm up my plans.

Also, on Friday morning I had a chance to make another phone-call with Mitch from Counterpart Coaching on how to race in the heat. I was anxious, but looking forward to the race.

The five hour drive down to Frankfurt went well, even with all the weekend traffic. We were staying with some relatives of mine, and they went out of their way to help me get ready for the race.

Day before the race

We slept in until 8am, had some breakfast with the family and then went into the town to collect the race package.

It was blazing hot, and just walking a bit around town and the exhibition was exhausting, so we made sure to have some extra water. We went back to the family and I packed my bags before lunch. The family had prepared a nice pasta lunch so my carbo-loading went really great. After that, I finished packing and we drove out to the bike check-in at the swim venue at Langener Waldsee, about a 30 minute drive.

Again, the sun was out in full force and the temperature was in the mid-90s – very hot for a German summer. We had a 15 minute walk from the car to registration in the sun, and I had to wait another 15 minute in line at check-in.

Tina got back to the car as soon as she could, but I had to endure for a bit longer. Check-in was uneventful – after all it was my fourth long-distance race and I had made sure to read all provided information. The swim would be a non-wetsuit swim (official water temperature on race day was 25.7 °C, about 80°F). We also had to drop off the run bag – I was a bit worried as I had some water in my FuelBelt in there and hoped it would not get too hot by the time I picked it up in T2 on the next day.

After that, I hurried back to the car but still missed the start of the Soccer World Cup match Germany vs. Argentina and the first German goal. I was drinking water all the time, but I still felt the heat. We then went for a quick visit with an old friend, watched the second half of the World Cup match and a chance to drink a lot more water. However, by the time we went back home, I had a bit of a headache and had some Coke to fix it. A quick dinner, and I was in bed by 9:30pm.

Race morning

Tina and I slept quite well, some clouds had moved in and it had cooled down a bit. I got up at 3:30am. My relative Doris helped me prepare my big race breakfast (two rolls with nutella and almond butter, three egg omelette, coffee, orange juice and a lot more water). I mixed my bottles and was ready to leave by 5:20. My wife drove me out to the swim start and dropped me off. Logistically it is quite tricky to get back from Langener Waldsee to Frankfurt, so Tina decided to skip the swim, have a breakfast with our family and then head into Frankfurt.

After another walk to T1, I was in transition by 6:10 to ceck on my bike. No flats during the night, so all I had to do was put my bottles on the bike and find a porta-potti. I looked over to the Pros (who started 15 minutes before the agegroupers), but only Cameron Brown was still there. After some good wishes for him, I got my stuff ready, listened to the national anthem played for the pro start and then slowly ambled over to the start area. I was in the water a few minutes before the start and tried to find a less congested area.

Swim

The swim ended up being pretty uneventful. It was somewhat crowded, but whenever it got too bad I just backed off and tried to swim away from the aggressive people. The swim is a two different loops with a short walk on the beach in between. The first loop is about 2.1k – 900 meters out, 400 across and another 800 back. The out section went pretty quick, but I was a bit surprised by the length of the across part. You couldn’t really see how far it would be, but there always seemed to be just one more buoy. I was back at the beach after 43 minutes, so I knew I would end up around my planned 1h20.

I didn’t do any really long swims, but I didn’t have any problems in the second loop. I was looking forward to being out of the water, it was getting a little bit cold without the wetsuit. I managed to pee a bit during the swim – that’s just how relaxed I managed to swim. When I hit the beach again, I had swum a bit under 1h21, so I had slowed town just a bit on the second, but that was expected and I was okay with the time.

I then walked up the steep sandy section on the beach, had a quick drink and grabbed my bag. I put on bike bibs and a short sleeve bike shirt – it would be a long ride and I didn’t care about the extra two minutes it would take to put the clothes on. Before grabbing my bike, I had another quick pee in a porta potti and then I was on my way …

Bike

The bike course in Frankfurt starts with a 12k section from the lake to downtown Frankfurt on a wide, closed four-lane street. I immediately felt really good and relaxed, and even though a lot of people were overtaking me, my speed was really good. My best plan was to race at a 29 km/h average, but my average was over 31 km/h (it was a bit downhill), and even towards the end of the first loop it stayed over 30 km/h.

Everything was going great. HR was in check, speed was great, I was eating and drinking as planned, and I made hourly stops to pee so I knew I was hydrating well. I had a little bad patch shortly after the second loop started, but I took things a bit easier, made sure to eat and drink some more. After that my stomach felt a bit strange, so I just drank some more water, had a bit of Coke and everything settled down. On the 2nd half of the 2nd loop I felt really strong, and overtook a lot of people without trying too hard. I relaxed on the last downhill section into Frankfurt, and was hoping for a good run.

Also, my great bike time meant that I beat Macca and the race winner Andreas Raehlert .. I finished my bike before they finished their full race – something I had not thought possible before the race.

Here are the raw numbers from my Ergomo:

Hour	AP	NP	HR	Speed
1	110	139	121	31,5
2	118	139	117	29
3	101	123	99	30,9
4	109	131	120	28,7
5	104	115	118	29
6	102	120	116	29,3
10 Min	74	93	109	32,4	easy finish
Total	106	128	115	29,7	6:08:28 182,5 km

These numbers have to be taken with a bit of caution. The numbers are way too low to be realistic. My guess is that I would need about 200 watts to be able to come up with a 30k/h average. So the numbers are about 95watts to low. This would give me AP of 201w and NP of 223w. The way NP is calculated, NP would be even closer to AP, but this is just a rough estimate. So even if the raw numbers give me a VI of 1.2 (way too high!), it is realistically around 1.08. This means that I was riding relatively even. All in all, a pretty good ride, probably the best I have ever done in an IM.

Run

In T2, I again took my time. I completely redressed, had a volunteer put some more sunscreen on me, and took another quick stop at a porta potti. All this resulted in a slow T2, but also meant that when I started to run my HR was pretty much where I wanted it to be (goal was under 130, if possible closer to 125). The pace was okay (around 6 min/k) and I just hoped things would stay that way.

Towards the end of the first loop, the woman’s winner Sandra Wallenhorst ran by me, so I got some TV time with her:

(I’m on the left, Sandra is on the right.)

However, towards the middle of the second loop the walk breaks at the aid stations were not quite enough, and I had to walk a bit more. I was taking a short stop in a porta potti and hoped that would help me reset things. However, I had run out of steam. The run breaks got more and more frequent and pretty soon I was more walking than running – with the average pace dropping accordingly.

At the middle of the third loop, I had a quick talk with my wife and told her it would be a slow second half – but that I had no doubts I’d be able to finish. I asked her to try and get me some cold Cola by the next time I would run by her. I just goes to show how far off I was in my head. It just took me a few minutes to improve on this plan. When I reached the next aid station, I got a big cup of ice and stopped at the people handing out the cola. I sat down on their bench (they were quite concerned and checked a couple of times that I was okay) and downed a big cold Cola and nibbled on some Pretzels. After that, I walked a bit more to start digesting the Cola and started to run again a bit more often.

The Cola effect wore off pretty soon, but I was working as hard as I could. Things were not much better, but as I knew I was on my last loop I started setting some goals to keep me motivated. At the start of the last loop I was still hoping to be able to run sub-5h, but that quickly turned out to be unrealistic. So I again took a Cola-bench-stop – shorter this time, but I got even more encouragement from the volunteers. My new goal became to come in at sub-13h. And I struggled a bit to find some “open” space to enjoy the finish chute. I took some extra time to find my wife in the crowd and smiled my thanks at her. Total race time was 12:54:52:

Here is a quick look at the numbers for the run from my Garmin:

	Duration	Pace	HR
0-10	1:01:30	6:09	126
10-20	1:10:10	6:56	121
20-30	1:23:39	8:18	109
30-40	1:17:47	7:45	113
40-Finish	0:15:47	7:24	115
Total	5:08:53	7:18	117

Summary and Outlook

I think I did the best I could do for the race. I did not race the bike too hard, but think I just didn’t have the required fitness to produce a better marathon. As this was to be expected, I’m quite happy with the way I kept working to come up with as good a marathon as possible. Of course, there are always a few minutes I could have been faster, but I didn’t make any major mistakes. Compared to my PR from Roth 2007 (when I ran way too fast from 5k to 20k in the marathon), my race execution was much better this year.

Here is where I think improvements can come from:

I have to increase the overall training volume, but especially on the run. In the 2010 season (which started in October 2009), I just ran 1100k in preparation before the race, an average of 125k per month. In preparation for my PR in 2007 I ran an average of 170k per month. Some of it was due to an injury, but I still didn’t find enough time for better run training.
At about 89kg, my weight was unacceptably high for the race which made racing in the heat even harder. I’m disappointed in myself that I didn’t manage to get my weight down.
My bike was really good for the low volume I had done (2150k in 2010, 240k average per month). I mainly attribute that to the bike camp in March which gave me a really good base.
My non-wetsuit swim time of 1:21 was the slowest IM swim I did, but again it was a good time for the low volume I did (barely 50k in 2010). In 2007, I swam a 1:12 on more than 200k.

All of this means that I have a pretty good understanding of what needs to be done when I’m going to race my next Ironman:

get my weight down (85kg or lower)
some more swimming (maybe 100k or 50 hours)
another bike camp and some more overall cycling volume (about 4.000 km, about 150 hours)
increased run volume (at least 1500k, about 145 hours)

Summing this up, it gives me a total volume of about 350 hours from October to June (9 months), an average of almost 40 hours per month. Not impossible, but certainly no chicken shit. It requires some more time than I currently have available, so I’m not going to race an IM next year. Maybe 2012? Right now I’m happy to take things a bit easier, and I’m really looking forward to my vacation starting a week from now …

Race Plan Frankfurt

2010-06-30T16:54:00.001+02:00

A few days before the race, it is time to put my race plan into writing. Even though I have a pretty clear plan in my head, writing it down always helps.

Photo taken from the finish line webcam at http://www.ironman.de/live/webcam.htm

General

I know that I do not have the fitness I would like to have. Therefore, any dreams of dramatic improvements can be put to rest (unless I want a spectacular detonation during the run). I will have to execute really well if I want to have a decent run. However, if I manage to do that, I believe that I can end up close to my current PR of 11h58.

There are a number of things that lead to me to be a bit skeptic. I haven’t done enough long sessions, and my weight is about 6 pounds over were I want to be. Also, it’s probably going to be quite hot for the race which will make the race even harder for me.

Swim

I haven’t done much swimming, so I have no idea what my swim time is going to end up. As long as I focus on technique and swimming relaxed, I should end up okay even if my longest swim session was just about 2.5k. The wetsuit swim in Hannover felt pretty good, and I hope it’s not going to be too hot to swim in a wetsuit. [Update: It’s currently very hot and the water temperature is just short of not allowing wetsuits. By race day, we’ll probably be over it – so it looks like a non-wetsuit swim.] I’m guessing that I’ll swim around 1h15, and I’m fine as long as I swim under 1h20. But whatever, a few extra minutes on the swim won’t hurt me much.

I’ll take transition pretty easy, too – just put on my helmet and then grab the bike with shoes and all the rest of my stuff (glasses, gloves and arm warmers if it is cold in the morning). I should be on the bike somewhere between 1h20 and 1h30.

Bike

The key for the bike will be to set up a good run – this requires an “easy” bike. It will be quite hard to keep this thought in mind for the 6h30 or so that the bike will take, especially with my flashy new bike and race wheels.

This year, the bike course will be a bit longer than usual – some construction will add an extra 5k to the bike, about 10 minutes at my speed. At my current fitness, I think that I can manage an average speed between 28.5 and 29 km/h.- this would give a bike split of 6h30 to 6h22. When I told my friends about this goal time, they thought I was low-balling, but I think anything faster would be bad for my run split. The numbers to arrive at this time are HR under 120, and wattage about 125w. (I know that number is probably low, but my Ergomo is off – which doesn’t really matter, I want to ride as even as possible, and absolute numbers are not important for that.)

I hope to be off the bike at under 8 hours – probably around the time that the first pros will have finished. As they start 15 minutes before the age groupers, it might be a goal of finishing the bike before the first pro finishes the race, but that would require a 7h45 and that’s probably a bit fast for me.

As important as not spending too much energy on the bike is making sure I eat and drink enough. For eating, I’m aiming for 250 to 300 cal on the bike, which is about one bar per hour, the occasional banana and then some calories from the Powerbar electrolyte drink they’re handing out on the course.

As it’s going to be really hot, it will be important to drink enough and cool myself down with water over the head. I hope I’ll be able to manage things better than at Hannover when I was overheated when I came off the bike and had a pretty bad run.

Run

Once I get off the bike, change and start the run, it’ll be interesting to see if I manage to keep my HR down. It’ll be in the middle of the day (around 3pm or so), so it’s going to be pretty hot and it will be important to start the run as easy as possible (HR under 130, if possible around 125). This will require some walk breaks, especially on the short steep sections onto the bridges and at the aid stations to make sure that I get some more drinks, water and ice. I’ll also have to try to eat as long as possible in order to be able to have a solid run. I’m going to prepare my FuelBelt and have PowerBlocks and Gu Shot Blocks available. In the past, I got to a point where I didn’t care too much any more, stopped eating and ran out of steam soon after that. So it’ll be mentally hard to keep in the race and make the best of my chances. I don’t think that I’ll be able to run any faster than a 6 minute per k pace, and I hope to be able to keep that up as long as possible. This would result in 4h15 marathon, and a total race time of just a bit over 12 hours.

I’ll count anything under 12:08 as a PR (my current PR is a 11:58 from Roth 2007), and I’ll be very proud if I manage to run in that general area.

Building confidence with some better training sessions

2010-06-22T23:04:00.001+02:00

After my not-so-good race in Hannover, I’ve tried to do some confidence building sessions. So far, it has worked fine.

(Picture found on Deadra’s blog.)

The best session I have done in a long time was last weekend’s long brick session. As per Mitch’s suggestion, I did some pretty long sessions around my half-IM in Hannover – the week before I did a 3 hour run, and for the week after he suggested a long brick. As I am a bit time constrained, the instruction was to run for about 90 minutes after a bike ride – as long as my time allows.

I was still a bit tired and spent after the Hannover race and I knew that my work week was going to be a bit hectic as well. So I capped my bike ride at 2 hours. I went a bit easier than IM intensity, but I still had some very solid sections in there. The weather was a bit cold so I had arm and leg warmers on and made sure I was eating and drinking enough. It’s funny how a 2 hour ride seems to be quite solid at the start of the season, but goes over in a flash when you’re almost ready for a race. Also, my mind was already on the run. I was hoping for a much better run than in my half-IM where every step was hard work.

After a quick change of clothes, the first steps of the run felt strange as usual, but I quickly loosened up, had a good “bio-break” and really felt okay. I wasn’t hot at all (in fact, I had even put on a long shirt), I was able to eat and drink as planned and just felt great. My HR quickly got down to where I wanted it (under 125 beats per minute), and it even took some effort not to slow down and have the HR drop further. Time flew by, and I was feeling great the whole way. I didn’t manage to run for 90 minutes – my pace was so quick that I had run the planned course after 1h26m. In Hannover, I wasn’t able to run any quicker than a 6 min/k pace even when working hard, now I was running around 5:20/k without any effort at all.

How is that possible? Well, here are some ideas:

The bike before the run was quite easy compared to Hannover.
I wasn’t overheated, so everything just clicked: HR, eating, drinking, being relaxed, pace.
I was better rested than before the race – I had made sure to get some extra sleep during the week to recover from the race.

For my IM in Frankfurt, this means that I have to make sure that I start the race well rested and have to manage to complete the bike race within myself – not too hard, and certainly avoid getting hot. This includes bike intensity, but also measures such as making sure to put on sun screen so I don’t get another sunburn, drink a little more than in Hannover (so I start peeing before the half-way mark) and relax a bit on the last bike section before T2.

I also hope that it’s not going to be too hot in Frankfurt – but as I don’t have any influence on that it’s better to come up with a good plan if it ends up being hot. But at least I know now that I can have a decent run in Frankfurt if I manage to execute smartly. At least I can influence that …

Hannover “Mitteldistanz” 1/2 IM Race

2010-06-10T18:37:00.001+02:00

This Sunday, I was racing my first triathlon in a long time, the 1/2 Ironman distance race in Hannover (called Mitteldistanz or middle distance in Germany). I’m not quite sure what to make of my performance, but first let’s have a look at the race.

Before the race

Friday and Saturday I made sure that my bike was in working order. As I had taken the plunge and splurged on new race wheels (a pair of used but as good as new Zipp 404s), there was some scrambling around to make sure I had the right tubes with long enough valves. The week had been pretty stressful, and I was glad I had the chance for a little nap at noon on Saturday. Still, I was probably not very rested, even if my training volume was pretty low in the week leading up to the race.

On Sunday, we drove for two hours to Hannover. It was pretty close to the end of the bike drop off, but I preferred to get some more sleep and a big breakfast in. Once I get settled in the big transition area, I had enough time to put on my race clothes and warm up a bit for the swim. It was going to be the first really hot day of the year, so I made sure I had enough water to drink.

Swim

Up to a week before the race, it was pretty cold and there were some worries that the swim would have to be canceled. The week of the race it was quite warm, though, and with a wetsuit it wasn’t cold at all.

I got into the water maybe 10 minutes before the start of my wave, so I still had some time to hitch the wetsuit up after the initial contact with the water. I was ready and hoped for a good day!

The swim itself was pretty uneventful. It was in a canal which meant that it would be 1k up the canal, turn around a buoy and then 1k back. The initial mayhem cleared up pretty fast, and I was swimming pretty much by myself. At the turnaround I had a quick look at my watch and was very happy to see a time of just over 17 minutes. I managed to stay focused on my stroke and and felt pretty good the whole time. The whole swim was over after 35 minutes. With about 5 minutes under my estimated time the swim must have been short. :-)

An easy run up to the transition, put on the help and grab my bike.

Bike

Once on the bike, I had problems to get my HR down. I wanted to get under 120, but a combination of heat, mental lapse and people overtaking me prevented that. My wattage was in the goal range of 140, but the HR stayed just under 130. After a while, I just figured that the excitement of the race had increased my HR, and I decided to stick with the wattage. At the end of the first loop, I was quite happy – AP at 138w, NP at 147 (so I was riding quite even), but a speed of 31,3 and HR at 130.

As had happened the last time I did this race two years ago, wattage and the other data didn’t quite match. I figure that the Ergomo has some problems with the heat we were having and giving me low numbers. But so far, I hadn’t really dug myself a hole, but it was clear that I shouldn’t really increase my effort in the second and third loop.

By this time, I was pretty much riding with the same people – usually getting dropped on the uphills, and then catching people again on the downhills (even riding by wattage does that). On the second and third lap, I kept things pretty much the same. I still dropped wattage a bit towards the end (133AP/143NP for the whole ride), and it was getting really hot. I’m not sure if I was drinking enough, I didn’t pee at all this time during the ride. But I had eaten quite well and was hoping for a good run.

Total ride time: 2 h 48 min 12 secs

Run

After dropping off my bike, I changed into run clothes and went off. After the first k or so, I stopped for a quick pee. I pretty soon noticed that I was really hot and tried to cool down with water. But – as had happened on the bike – I didn’t really get my HR down to where I wanted it to be. I wanted to run at about 125 with a cap of 130, but I hardly managed to get it down to 130. I even put in a few walk breaks to get the HR down, but all to no avail. I tried what I could – water, coke, a cookie, but couldn’t manage to get anything solid down. At the same time, my pace was over 6 min per k, so I was relatively slow as well.

I was feeling pretty crappy, too, and I was getting a quite disappointed. I struggled through the first loop, happy to see my wife (and the dog) for the first time since the start, and was almost ready to throw in the towel – there was no way I was able to lift the pace. But I didn’t want to have the bad experience before my IM race and pushed on. I took my time at the aid stations and made sure I was drinking as much as I could and hoped the Coke would help, too. Between the aid stations I was using my FuelBelt to further cool down. By the middle of the second loop I was feeling a bit better. At least I managed to run a half-way decent pace – even with the breaks at the aid stations I was running faster than 6 min/k and started to overtake a few people. That didn’t last too long, and towards the end my pace slowed again. I knew I would be at over 2h10 for the run, so I just relaxed a bit and took it easy for the last few k. I was really relieved to reach the finish line and was pretty wrecked after that.

Total run time: 2 h 11 min 33 secs

Evaluation

As stated above, I’m disappointed with my performance last Sunday. As you can see from my expectations before the race, I was hoping to be able to go a bit faster, especially during the run.

Then again, I think I did the best I could during the second part of the run. I did not break down completely and just walk it in (which I did two years ago), even if the pace was slower than I was hoping for. The feeling will probably be what it will be like in the second half of the marathon in Frankfurt – and I will be happy if I manage to run in the 4h20min region.

So here are my takeaways from this race:

No need to worry about the swim – some more longer sessions and I shouldn’t have a problem with the IM swim if I don’t expect much under 1h20min.
it is important to get my HR down after the swim – otherwise I’ll be just overpacing.
I have to re-calibrate my Ergomo numbers again. For IM, stay within the HR targets even if wattage seems low. On Sunday, 140watts were a bit much.
When it’s getting hot, make sure to drink enough! Pee before the half way point …
Still, I feel confident to be able to ride a 29 km/h average, which would translate to a 6h22m time for the 185k bike (Frankfurt will be a bit long this year).
As with the bike, make sure to get HR into acceptable range after transition. That will probably mean walk breaks, so I should just start walking the aid stations right from the start to take enough fluids.
With the HR lower, I should be able to get some calories down during the start of the run. (Something that I just couldn’t do in Hannover.)
Make sure to lower the overall stress in the week leading up to race. Hopefully I can take a few days really easy – sleeping in, staying at home etc.

I will try to simulate the run pacing on another training brick I have planned for this weekend – maybe a two hour ride and then a 16k transition run. I just hope that Frankfurt will not be as hot as Hannover. But you’ll never know and I just have to take things as they come and make the best of it.

Packed for my first tri this season

2010-06-05T22:51:00.001+02:00

Just a quick post after packing my stuff for tomorrow and being almost ready for bed …

Tomorrow, I’ll race my first tri this season. (In fact it is my first triathlon after the Ostseeman in 2008.) It is a half Ironman distance race in Hannover (http://www.wasserstadt-triathlon.de/index.html). I’ve done this race a few times before, but they’ve changed things around a bit (different layout for the swim, new shorter bike loop, new longer run loop), so I don’t really know what to expect. Also, with my past training I know I won’t be able to rip the course like I did in 2007 when I went really fast and almost everything clicked. (If I remember correctly, I was a bit disappointed because I did not manage to run under 1h40. Not a chance tomorrow!)

I’ve tried to come up with some time plan for my wife, but I know it’s pretty much a shot in the dark. My main goal is to be able to have a decent run the last 10k. (I’ve struggled with my run the last time I did the race in 2008 and had to walk the second half of the run leg.) As it’s going to be a hot day tomorrow (the first summer days have just arrived) with temperatures in the 80s and the start of the race around noon, I know I have to be really careful on the bike. This has led to the following plan, mixing IM and faster speeds:

2k Swim: 40 Minutes (no idea where I’ll end up ;-)
90k Bike: 3 laps of 30k each (2h53, goal: sub 2h55, if everything goes great sub 2h50)

Lap 1: ~ IM (140W, <120HR, 29km/h): 1h02
Lap 2: a little faster (150W, <130HR, 31 km/h) 58 Minutes
Lap 3: ~ 1/2 IM (160W, < 140HR, 34 km/h) 53 Minutes

21.1 Run: 2 laps of 10,6k each (1h53, goal: sub 1h55, if everything goes great sub 1h50)

Lap 1 to 5k: ~IM (<130HR, a little faster than 6 min/k) 30 minutes
Lap 1 rest: a little faster (<135HR, 5:30 min/k) 31 minutes
(goal: first loop in under 1:00h)
Lap2 if feeling okay: ~ 1/2 IM (HR whatever ~ 5 min/k) 53 minutes

Adding the transitions in (5 minutes for T1 and T2?) gives a total of about 5h35, so I’ll try to get under 5h30. Even if I have a great race I don’t see me going any faster than a 5h20.

But whatever happens tomorrow, I have to keep my goal of a decent second half of the run in my mind. If I manage to pick up the pace then, this race will have been a success. Slowly starting to get nervous, hope I’ll be able to sleep …

Long Run around Ratzeburger See

2010-06-04T14:05:00.001+02:00

One of the standard races in the winter in the 26k run around the Ratzeburger See (a large lake adjacent to the town of Ratzeburg), usually held on the first Sunday in December. I’ve posted about this race in the past [include link]. This winter, I was training to do the race, but then got an injury and had to pull out of the race. One thing that has been on my list since then was to do the run as a long training run. I finally got around to do it!

After loading my FuelBelt with drink, food and my iPhone (for music and a camera), I did the short 25 min drive from my home to a parking lot at the North tip of the lake. (The race starts in Ratzeburg at the South tip, but it was easier to do the run from the North.) Here’s a Google Earth screenshot:

After a short jog through the forest, I reached the lake near a little marina:

On the Eastern side, the dirt trail runs pretty close to the lake, usually in a nice shade from some bushes. Even though it had rained a bit in the last days, the trail was not too muddy and great to run on.

After about 9k the trail moves a bit away from the lake and into some hillier terrain:

For the race, this is the last harder section – you had better saved some power for this! But on my run, I had just warmed up and was able to cruise them quite comfortably.

After 13k, you come to the old town of Ratzeburg that is sitting on a little dam between two lakes. After the short section through the town, there are some beautiful views on the lake and the dome:

The eastern side of the lake was almost completely part of East Germany. Before 1989, it was impossible to run around the lake (in fact the race was started as a celebration of the border opening up). By now, you have to know where the border was to spot the location of the fences – pretty scary stuff back then. It never fails to be thankful for the peaceful events that took place in 1989 that allowed Germany to re-unify. Even if it’s tricky to pick the exact location of the borderline, you can still tell that you are in East Germany – the whole are is much more rural, and the villages just have a different feel to it, even though a lot of old houses have been beautifully rebuilt.

Also, the eastern side of the lake is much hillier. Probably because of that the trail moves at times away from the lake but you are always running in almost no traffic except for the occasional biker or walker.

I was going through my water and my ShotBlocks (have I mentioned that I hate gels?), and was making good progress. I was taking an occasional walk break on some steeper hills, but my legs felt okay.

After 27k and almost exactly 2h30 of running, I was back at the parking place where I left my car:

I was very happy with this run. It was very beautiful (the pictures can’t really capture it), and my legs felt good all the way. Now if only the race feels that good …

First Key Bike Session

2010-05-10T21:58:00.001+02:00

As preparation for my Ironman races, I like to do the following key session:

Easy warm up for about 30 minutes, then
3*50k at increasing effort:
- first one slightly easier than IM effort
- second one at IM effort
- third one slightly faster than IM effort
then another easy 30 minutes back home
and a little transition run

Between the hard parts there is just a short break to pee and load up on nutrition. I usually bring a little backpack so I don’t have to carry everything with me – everything should be as close to racing as possible, so taking all the stuff that’s needed for such a long session would be quite bulky.

The idea of this session (inspired by some of Gordo’s suggestions) is to dial in your IM effort. If you manage to do the third one faster than IM effort and still be able to have a decent T-Run, you should be fine. But if you go out too hard or not eat/drink enough, you’ll notice it pretty soon.

I usually try to get two of these sessions in when preparing for an IM, but often something comes up (bad weather, scheduling conflicts, etc.) and I usually manage to make just one in preparing for an IM. Even with our new puppy, I cleared two days on my calendar for solely doing these sessions. When I get the sessions done, it builds a lot of confidence, and even if you notice that your pacing was too quick, at least you’ll learn a lot.

First Loop

I was shooting for 140/150/160w of average power, trying to ride pretty even (goal VI well under 1.1). HR should be 110/115/120 or so. I hoped that would result in average speeds of 28/29/30 km/h. Once I got going after my big breakfast (1000cal as I would on race morning!), I felt really good. I was going pretty relaxed, eating and drinking a lot, but still going pretty quick.

Here are the numbers:

average power 140w
normalized power 152w
VI 1.08
HR 113
average speed 29.1 km/h

Apart from HR, this was going really well, and I hoped to build on that – but I started to get a bit anxious at going over 30 km/h for the last loop. But whatever, a quick reloading, then it was on to

Second Loop

I was continuing to eat, but it wasn’t that hot, so I wasn’t really thirsty, but I still had to stop for a quick pee in the middle of the loop. Managed to lift the effort, but got more anxious about the third loop – it was going to be hard!!

The numbers look really great, right where I wanted them to be:

average power 151w
normalized power 161w
VI 1.07
HR 120
average speed 30.1 km/h

Everything was going well, and I had the “proper nervousness” for the third loop.

But when I got back to where I left my backpack, some “friendly neighbor” had decided that a lone backpack in the forest was suspicious and tried to “save” it. Bummer – nothing more to eat and drink (plus some spare clothes were gone). All I had left was one clif bar and nothing to drink .. what to do?

Third Loop

So I rode five minutes back to a village where I had seen some kids playing near a house. I asked them for some water, so at least I had one full bottle and one bar for the third loop. Ready to give it a shot!

I tried to go even harder than on the second loop, and managed to pick up the effort a bit. But it felt pretty strained, and after half the loop was done, I felt that my strength was gone. I tried to keep up the effort, but it was obvious that my power numbers were dropping rapidly.

Here are the numbers (full loop and numbers for the two halves):

average power 140w (155/125)
normalized power 156w (169/141)
VI 1.12 (1.09/1.13)
HR 120 (123/118)
average speed 29.5 km/h (28.8/30.3 – second half is a lot more down)

It’s pretty obvious from the numbers that I was coming a bit apart on the second half. I was debating weather to do the t-run. I decided to cut the loop a bit short and stopped at a gas station 3k before the “official” end of the loop for an emergency refueling with a Coke and some chocolate.

T-Run

After that I cycled home pretty mellow, but was feeling good enough to go on my t-run. A quick change of clothes in our garage, grab my fuel-belt and then go for a run. I was feeling okay considering how bad in shape I was just 15 minutes ago. The 20 minute run was uneventful which was all I could hope for at this point. I even felt good enough to pick up the pace a bit after the initial 2k of easy, and didn’t have any problems.

Assessment

I really learned a lot during this session:

I was coming apart on the third loop. It had something to do with my lack of proper nutrition, and think I now have a pretty good understanding of what I need for the race. It comes down to about 300 cal per hour in bars, drink and some “real” food.
While some part of slowing down can be explained by nutrition (or lack thereof), the pace/effort was still a bit too quick for my current fitness level. I might be able to get in shape for that by the time my IM comes around, so it would be good to complete a second session of this type and see if I have improved a bit by then.
When I take the time and scale down the effort, I can bounce back from a calorie deficit and get back to feeling decent. This was an important confidence builder, as I will have some low points during my race. If I want to reach my goal of “running the run”, I will have to get through these bad patches better than I managed in previous years. I just need some confidence and a bit of patience.

I hope to do another one of these key sessions in addition to my “normal” training. It is on my calendar for May 24th. I’ll keep you posted how I progress until then!

Puppy and Training don’t mix very well

2010-04-13T10:23:00.001+02:00

There’s been a big change in our household: We’ve added a new family member, a little Spaniel we’re calling Snoopy: We got him on April 2nd, and our lives have never been the same. We’ve been dog-sitting when my in-laws were on vacation, but a puppy is a different story – the time demands are a lot higher than with a grown up dog.

So training has become more difficult and requires a bit more planning and understanding by my wife. There have been moments where I thought that it’s next to impossible to train for an Ironman while raising Snoopy. (And of course Snoopy is the first priority now! Both spending time with him and also making sure my wife has some time for herself.) But things have started to settle down a bit, and I’ve decided to do what I can and see where that leads me. Over the last few days I managed a longer run (19k at a reasonable pace) and a bit of cycling (although not nearly as much as I would have liked). The longer bike rides look really tricky for now, but again, I’ll just see what’s possible.

This last weekend it has gotten a bit colder and rainy again, which resulted in horrible riding conditions – muddy, wet streets (as the farmers were out working on their fields) resulted in a very dirty bike. So in addition to playing with Snoopy, I also have to clean my bike now! So I thin I’ll try to get another long run in this week (hopefully 24k or so) and see if my bike magically cleans itself …

Soso 10k race

2010-04-02T11:10:00.001+02:00

On Sunday, I ran a shorter race, a 10k close to where I live, the Travelauf in Bad Oldesloe.

Originally I had planned to run the 29k Hochbrückenlauf (see my race report from last year), but family obligations didn’t give me enough time, and I had to re-plan. The way my legs felt after the training camp, it was probably better that way, I would have had to add some more running during my week in Mallorca in order to be in shape for a longer running race.

As this was also the weekend that daylight savings time started here in Germany, I had some trouble getting up in time and I was a bit late. After race number pick-up, a much needed toilet stop and a short warm-up run, I barely had enough time to make it to the start line in time.

I was hoping to run about 42 minutes which would have required a 4:15 or quicker pace. During the first three k’s I was seeing splits hovering just under 4:30/k, so it didn’t seem quite possible. At the turn-around I had a time of about 22:20, so my goal was impossible to make. Bummer – I was running hard, my HR was right around 155, and I didn’t feel I could run much quicker.

Nonetheless, I tried to pick up the pace, my HR moved into the 160s, and I started to pick up some people. Some fought back, but in the end I just passed a whole lot of people. I even managed to run up to some of the younger guys from my club, and ran by them with about one k to go. (“Where did you suddenly come from?” they asked after the race.) I didn’t have much left at this point, and the last steep downhill hurt a lot, but I managed to reach the finish in 43.37.

I certainly didn’t have the speed I would have liked, but that is not so important this year. I’m happy with the way I stayed mentally strong and pushed right to the finish. This is certainly something I’m happy with and that I can take with me to IM Germany. If I manage to hold the run together like this (even at the slower speed, but with the much longer duration), I’m going to have a great race.

Now I “only” have to put in the training for a long race …

Great training camp finished

2010-03-20T21:40:00.001+01:00

I’m writing this as I’m sitting in the Airport waiting for my flight to leave (delayed, of course). I’m pretty cooked after an easier day and another two hard training days. I’m really looking forward to some rest (i.e. work and no big training) now!

On Wednesday, the training camp had an official rest day. I took the chance to get a longer (but pretty easy) run to the light house in. Most of the run was along the beach and the waterfront, and then a bit up towards the cliffs and the lighthouse (which required about 10 minutes of pretty steep uphill running). Great views from up there along the coast line – too bad I didn’t bring my camera. But here’s a picture from Horacio I found on Flickr:

After that it was just an easy 30 minute swim, some lying in the sun taking a nap, and more nice eating.

Thursday morning I got another swim in. 60 minutes with some faster/longer sets, all in all not feeling too bad. I had signed up for a “shorter” training ride today as it included some hill repeats. It was an easy 45 minutes out towards a nice hill – some switchbacks (about 10 minutes of uphill) and again great views from the top. Then we went back down the other side towards the old monastery Betlem and back – repeat twice for four uphill intervals.

The group then decided for a longer loop back, so I ended up with another 95k session. I thought of doing another core session, but I cancelled that in favor of a nap – as I had signed up for the big stage on the next day!

Friday morning the weather promised to be great for the long ride. It started with a 7.15 meeting to put the bikes in a van and then a quick breakfast. At 7.45 we boarded the bus to be shipped across the island. After 90 minutes we were dumped in Port Andratx to start the 170k ride back to the hotel. A quick picture of the group before the start and then we left. Pretty soon the hills and mountains started and I had to work pretty hard. After a short stop to make sure everyone was still with the group after the initial tricky route through the town. The faster people split off the front. Unfortunately, after the next mountain we re-joined them after one of them crashed on the downhill (probably a broken collarbone). Again, some more delay in order to make sure that the rider would be brought to a hospital. Good thing that there were no more issues after that!

After three hours of up and down riding we were at the base of the Puig Major, the biggest climb of the tour – almost 14k with an average grade of 7%, about 800m of climbing. Everyone was supposed to ride the climb at his or her own pace. Our guide made sure we were all okay and had enough to drink and eat, and then went on his own little training session.

Here’s a view from about half way up back to Soller where the climb started:

Except for this short photo stop, I went at a pretty constant heart rate and didn’t loose too much time on the rest of the group. In fact, towards the end of the climb I was even getting closer to the girls in front of me, so I was quite happy with it. It was probably the longest climb I ever rode, it took me 1h 5 minutes. The guide rode in about 45 minutes, and he said the record was 33 minutes. We caught our breath at the top of the climb, happy that almost all of the climbing was over. After riding through the dark tunnel at the top, there were some smaller uphills that didn’t feel too good, but we made good progress. Before the last long downhill some of the group stopped to pass some drinks around, but I went on with the others. I then ended up near the front of the group and decided to stick with them so I had someone to copy when going down the hill. We got a sweet draft behind our guide in the last flatter section towards Pollenca where we stopped at a supermarket for water, coke and something to eat.

Everyone was pretty tired by now, but we still had about 60k of mostly flat riding back to hotel. Again, the guide and one of the stronger guys rode from the front at a good pace. We quickly rode through some coast towns, and it was a pretty quiet group by now. The last hills hurt quite a lot, but the group stuck together until we hit the hotel after more than 7h30 of glorious riding through the mountains in great sunshine. A warm welcome by some of the other guides, a quick photo after the ride, a long, hot shower, and a nice, big dinner – after that we were able to appreciate the great day we’ve had. What a great day of riding, and what a great way to end this training camp.

Heavy legs after three days in training camp

2010-03-18T07:11:00.001+01:00

In order to prepare for this year’s IM, I decided to up my bike volume by going on a training camp with “Hannes Hawaii Tours” to Mallorca. So far, I’ve spent three great days of training.

Day 1 started with sleeping in which felt great after the last few hectic days at home. Then a nice big breakfast and the first outside ride of the year. I had registered for the “25-27” group (no nor the age, but the average speed in kph) and we hit the speed almost perfectly. From the start there were a few people to chat with, some hills to test my legs, and only one short break. When we came back after 75k of riding, I felt that I had done something, but not totally spent. Still had enough energy for a swim session (25m pool right in front of my room) and a short core and stretching session.

The next day saw a bit longer session in even hillier terrain. First we did a run drills session in the morning. After that, the bike ride had just one short stop in almost exactly 3:30 hours of riding for 95k. The steeper hills really tested me, and I had to let the group go a little bit on the last steep hill.

I caught back up soon on the downhills – guess I really have to work on my power to weight ratio. :-) A nice shower, and I still had enough energy for another core session.

The third day (Tuesday), we had an even longer ride with a T-run. The terrain was a bit less challenging and a well running group, so we sped through the 105k ride in under four hours. A short break and then a 40 min T-run along the coast left me exhausted for the evening. Good thing that today (Wednesday) is a “rest day” (read: only two hours of easy training).

There is another ride planned for Thursday, which I’ll probably shorten a bit because I’ve signed up for the “big stage ride” on Friday – 170k of riding and about 2000m of climbing – most of it in the first half. Hopefully my legs will still be up for the challenge by then.

I’m really enjoying myself. It feels great to be able to focus on training and be able to talk triathlon and sports the whole day. Already starting to think about what I have to do to achieve some more ambitious goals. Looking forward to the next few days, but already miss my wife …

This Saturday: Spring is coming!

2010-03-12T18:01:00.001+01:00

I have been getting on the nerves of my family, friends and colleagues by saying that “Spring starts on Saturday”. By now, all I get is a resigned rolling of the eyes – almost everyone knows that tomorrow (Saturday) I’m going to fly to Majorca to my first ever training camp.

Photo by jmaclynn

In the past, I just didn’t have enough vacation time to justify taking a whole week of that for some decent training. Now that I’m self employed, this decision is a bit easier, and I still get to spend my long summer vacation with my wife.

So this year I’ve decided that I’ll try a bike focused camp. The way the winter weather has been so far, this was a pretty smart plan. I’ve complained enough about the harsh winter weather on this blog, so I’ll just mention that running on protected trails in the forest is still pretty much impossible. I don’t think I’ve ridden outside since December – because we’ve had solid snow cover since then. So the camp is coming at the right time to jump-start my biking and training in general.

Goals

As this is my first time in a camp, I’m not sure what to expect, but since I’ve decided to go with an established company, I’m sure they’ll be able to offer a great environment for training.

Both Saturdays will be travel days and I probably won’t be able to get much done besides that, so I basically have 6 full days on the island. In order not to kill myself, I’m probably going to have at least one day that I’ll take completely off or just do some very light volume – that leaves me five days for training.

As I haven’t had a very solid base training (biggest weeks have been in the 7 hour range), I don’t think that anything more than maybe 20 hours is prudent. (It’ll be interesting to see how soon I get swept up in training monster volume.) Most of this should be focused on riding the bike and getting a solid base for my IM focus after the camp. So here’s my breakdown of the 20 hours and the distances I think I can do:

Bike: 16 hours (5 days), about 400-450 km in group riding with at least one ride of more than 150 km
Swim: 2 hours (2-3 days), just easy
Run: 2 hours (3-4 days), again just easy

Running and swimming will be strictly for maintenance, and if I feel shattered, I’m more than willing to scale that back. If I’m feeling good however, I’ll add some more bike volume – it would be great if I could get more than 500km in.

Apart from training a lot, I’d really like to enjoy the atmosphere and relax a bit. I know there’ll be some stressful weeks ahead before the big summer vacation.

Actually, there is one more goal: Don’t do anything that’ll jeopardize the rest of my season. In order to scare myself a bit, I’ve already scheduled my next race: a local 10k a week after I’ve come back. That still gives me some time to recover, but hopefully keeps me from doing something too stupid.

Any suggestions on nice tours on Majorca or places I should visit? Are you going to be there as well and would like to get together? Let me know in the comments – thanks!

Weighty Issues: February 2010 Update

2010-03-07T22:57:00.001+01:00

Photo by Sharon Young

One more month gone, time to have another look at my (non-) progress on loosing weight.

Here’s my weigh in in the first days of March:

Weight: 88,2 kg (started at 88,3 kg, goal was around 87kg)
Body Fat: 17,8% (pretty much where I started)

So on both fronts, apparently I was standing still. In reality, it was more a story of one step forward (seeing 87 point something quite consistently), two steps back (with some bad eating around the middle of the month), and a step forward again. Not good, but it could have been much worse.

Looking back at my “bad days”, it was a combination of a number of things: Some stress at work, a couple of birthdays, and some frustration with the winter weather not allowing a focused training. (All of these by their own shouldn’t have been a problem, two might have been tricky, three was just too much.) The result was way too much eating way too often, and also some pretty reckless indulgences. Not good at all.

At least I’m back on track now. The last week of February was going well and I had a great race last week. I hope to get into the lower 87s by the end of March, but I’m not sure how I’m going to react to my first ever training camp – a week of cycling focus on Mallorca (or Majorca which seems to be the English version of the name). I’m really looking forward to some better weather and a chance for some big training volume, but I have no idea what influence that will have on my weight. Hopefully I can lean out a bit more.

I’m getting a bit sick of this constant struggle, and I can totally understand the problems of people that have to loose weight for health reasons. Still, for them it’s a question of good health, for me it’s a question of good performance. I think I can do way better in my IM this summer than last time, and I know that weight will play an important role in that. Now if only I can get some decent training volume started …

Whoa – where did a 1:34 half marathon come from?

2010-03-01T19:38:00.001+01:00

My Kiel Half Marathon race was great, even if it didn’t start too well.

I forgot to turn on my alarm clock, and slept about an hour longer that I had planned. So my leisurely 1h45-starting-the-day routine had to be shortened to 60 minutes – a lot quicker than I’d have liked and leaving a bit late. In the rush of packing, eating and having a coffee, I remembered my race belt but forgot my Garmin 405 watch. Bummer – no HR, no speed. I would have to run by feel – hadn’t done that in a race for a long time.

Leaving a bit late wasn’t a problem, the drive to Kiel went quick and we found a great half-legal parking spot right next to the starting line. Enough time to warm up a bit, deciding on the clothes to wear (long tights, long shirt, cap, no gloves) and having a look at the course. Most of the snow was gone, but had left a wet, sandy mess on the ground. Oh well, whatever – I was more concerned about running without much feedback. At least I had my old Polar in my bag, but without the right HR strap it was just a stopwatch.

As usual in winter races, the last few minutes before the start were uncomfortably cold, but as soon as the race started, it was okay. The race was three loops of 7k each, with the first loop adding the extra 100 meters to make it a half marathon. As usual, I started a bit back to ease into the pace (so there are a few seconds between my hand-stopped time and the official results), but the streets were wide enough so I could overtake a few people without too much trouble. The first k was right at 5 minutes, so I had found a good pace. (Only later did I realize that the sign was actually at 1.1k, so I was even faster than I thought.) The pace felt okay, and I just ran on at the same intensity. I missed the next k-signs, and the next indication came at 4k when I was just over 18 minutes. Whoa, am I going too fast? A bit of soul searching and checking of all systems, but it felt okay and I was confident I could hold on to that pace for the rest of the race. By then I had run up to a small group that was going about my pace, and I decided to run with them for a while. With a short k at the end of the loop the first loop was over with a time of 32:08 – sub 1:40 seemed to be very realistic, and I might even manage to get close to 1:35.

At the start of the second loop I was running with my group, and the pace felt really comfortable. I drank a bit at one of the aid stations and tried to remind myself to run cautious as I hadn’t done any long runs this year. Still, I had to hold back quite a bit, and after the first turn-around point I just decided to run my pace and see if they would hang on. I slowly started to pull away, without feeling I was running too hard. There was some uncomfortable head wind towards the end of the second loop, but I still felt okay. Time for the second loop: 31:27 – one more loop at that pace and I’d be able to break 1:35!

My fast pace started to catch up a bit to me. I had run up to someone else, but he started to pull away from me. But I was still overtaking quite a few other people (although it was hard to tell if they were running the half or the marathon that was going on at the same time and on the same course), and my splits were right on the edge. The last small hill was really hard, and the headwind wasn’t good. At the last k I thought my pace had slipped too much – I needed a 4 min last k to sneak under 1:35. But I knew that the last k would be a bit short, so I decided to give all I had. Overtaking a few more people, I sprinted down the finish chute. I had some trouble stopping my Polar watch – my muscles are used to the Garmin watch by now, and the upper right stop button on the Garmin merely changes the display on the Polar. But I caught that error in time, hit the split button and saw a 1:34:58. Yay! (Last loop was a 31:23.)

It took me a while to catch my breath, and I quickly went to the car to change into dry clothes. (Still, I caught a bit of a cold and don’t feel to well today.) While waiting for my friends, I noticed one advantage of being a little faster: There was no line in front of the massage tables! So I enjoyed a nice, long, relaxing massage and my legs feel almost normal today. I was so happy that I put a nice bill into their tip box.

To sum up, Kiel is not the prettiest course, but very good for fast times and a good thing to have on the calendar by end-February. Even though I didn’t train much, long or fast during the preceding months, I ran my fastest half marathon in a long time (probably since 2007). Still, I’m not sure where I stand. I know that in order to be in good shape for IM Germany I have a lot of work in front of me. Good thing I have a bike camp scheduled for mid-March in Mallorca. I’d better get in shape for that so I can enjoy some longer bike sessions there without having to kill myself. And I will need some longer runs, too. So much to do – and only so many hours to train! But I’m still enjoying every minute of it, and that’s what counts …

Kiel Half Marathon: Are you Ready?

2010-02-26T20:50:00.002+01:00

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

2010-02-22T22:35:00.001+01:00

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

2010-02-13T23:21:00.001+01:00

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:

Run in deep snow
Run on icy side streets
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

2010-02-07T22:23:00.001+01:00

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 …

More Snow Running

2010-01-31T20:00:00.000+01:00

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

2010-01-26T20:37:00.001+01:00

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

2010-01-17T21:00:00.000+01:00

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

2010-01-15T18:00:00.000+01:00

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 …

2010-01-11T22:00:00.000+01:00

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

2010-01-09T23:01:00.001+01:00

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

2010-01-05T22:00:00.000+01:00

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

2010-01-02T21:27:00.001+01:00

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 …

My knee likes Cycling!

2009-12-30T23:15:00.001+01:00

After my recent problems in starting to run again, I figured that maybe cycling would be a better idea …

Photo by Kevin Saunders

In the information that I found cycling was quite often mentioned as a good rehab sport after a PCL injury. So I did my exercises as mentioned in the previous post, and when my knee felt better, I got out my bike (even the sun came out a bit!).

At first, I had a little bit of tightness at the top of my pedal stroke, but that was totally bearable and didn’t get any worse. 30 minutes were quite enough though, thank you. After one day of not doing much else than my exercises, I was confident I could tolerate another session today. A little bit longer (45 minutes), but this time it wasn’t the knee that made me end the session but rather the cold. (There is a foot of snow in the weather report for us and rather nasty and cold Easterly wind.)

This was much better than my previous tries of going out for a run. If I’m okay tomorrow morning, then I think I will try to end the year with a little jog. If my knee doesn’t complain after that, then I’m confident that I can get back to training in January. We’ll see how it goes …

Knee not better at all

2009-12-26T22:00:00.000+01:00

Haven’t had much fun with my knee in the last days. Every time the pain was gone and I thought I could get back into training, the swelling and pain flared up again so I needed another few days off. I didn’t do anything big, but even two 30 minute runs within three days seemed to be too much. Bummer.

So I think I have to take things a bit slower than I planned and do a few exercises before going out for my next run. Here’s a couple of ideas that I found for strengthening the knee:

Front thigh (repeat 10 times)
Contract the front thigh (knee cup should move up), hold for 10 secs
Leg raises (repeat 10 times)
Lie on the back, one leg extended, the other bent at the knee. Raise the entire leg from the heel up, hold for 5 to 10 secs.
Backward leg raise (repeat 10 times)
Lie on stomach, then lift one leg as high as possible, hold for 5 to 10 secs.
Knee bends (repeat 10 to 20 times)
Stand with feet about shoulder wide (or closer). Bend the knees with a straight back and stop at about 90 degrees (or earlier when there is pain).

These exercises should be done for both legs (so that the uninjured leg is also strengthened) and you should slowly work up to doing them up to three times daily.

Then there are some ROM (range of motion) exercises for the knee such as these:

Heel prop
Elevate your heel on a pillow and allow gravity to straighten your leg (may be done in conjunction with (1) from the strengthening exercises)
Prone hang
Lie on the stomach with your knee and lower leg off the edge of your bed. Again, let gravity extend your leg.
Heel slides
Lie on your back and slide your heel towards the glutes as far as possible. May use the other leg for assistance in pushing.

Hopefully, these exercises will help me get back to regular training. The good news is that swimming and biking should be much easier on the knee. While cycling is not much of an option (it’s been snowing a bit and it’s really cold outside), I might benefit from a swim focus while my knee is healing. I’ll wait a bit before making plans …

Getting back to regular Running

2009-12-16T22:00:00.000+01:00

After my recent injury, I’m slowly getting back into something that can be called training.

Last week (my first week back into running after almost three weeks of break, I did three runs. With 23 (Mo), 28 (Fr) and 40 minutes (Su), I didn’t break any training records, but I managed to run without any issues. The knee was okay, and it felt great to be able to get out of the door. Also, I’m way back on my sports podcasts, so I had to get back to running! It’s good to be back on the trails behind our house ..

.. even if it’s mostly dark when I manage to get running after work.

This week, I’ve managed to 48 minute runs on Monday and today (Wednesday). I’m sure I could have run faster and/or longer, but for now the goal has to get back to running on a regular basis. I hope to be able to get at least two, better three more runs in (each shorter than hour), and then to slowly increase the duration of the runs.

It’s always tricky to run around the Christmas holidays, but I should be able to get a few runs in. By the end of December I want to be back in shape to run a decent 10k race that’s on my schedule for New Year’s Eve. I’d like to be able to get a longer run (around 1.30h) in by then, but that is less important than regular running and a bit of faster running.

After all, there are more important goals for next year than just a 26k race I missed because of my injury!

First little step back to fitness

2009-12-07T21:50:00.001+01:00

Managed to get my first little run in today. Felt good all the way around. My quadriceps held up fine, no complaints at all (and I was listening very closely!). It felt good to put on the running kit and get outside for a while.

Didn’t do much more than twenty minutes, but it felt like a little victory. On to the next little step!

Planning training after injury

2009-12-06T22:00:00.000+01:00

My injury is much better, but after some gentle reminders by my wife to be patient I’ve decided to give it a few more days. So maybe tomorrow or Tuesday.

Photo by Sundaybrunch

In the meantime, I’ve been taken the time to get some extra r&r. After all, when I’m back in full training, there won’t be too many chances to sleep until noon (like I managed to do today). Not sure if I really need all that sleep or if I’ve gotten lazy.

As I can’t do any training, I’ve been reading up on how to plan for starting training again after an injury. As a rule of thumb, for every week of no training, I should expect about two weeks to “recover” any fitness I’ve lost. I haven’t done any training for more than two weeks now, so I can expect to require all of December to get back to the level I was at. I’m tentatively planning one of the New Year’s Eve races on December 31st, but that’s still a long way off and I haven’t managed to run a single step yet. Maybe I’ll better take another nap …

Recovering from my injury .. planning for 2010

2009-12-02T22:00:00.000+01:00

It’s been more than a week that I’ve hurt myself again. Apart from eating some Diclofenac pill, wearing a knee bandage and the occasional stretching I haven’t done any sports activity at all.

I’m still not completely healed, but the swelling in my knee is mostly gone and I can move around without thinking too much about my knee. Bending and extending is almost back to normal again and I’m optimistic that I can slowly start running again, depending on my schedule either tomorrow (Thursday) or Friday. Not much more than an easy 15 or 20 minute jog, but I’m getting anxious to get out of the door again.

In the meantime I’ve been on the phone with Mitch from CounterpartCoaching and we’ve been talking about my 2010 season plan. For December the main goal is to get back to regular training, so I don’t want to get too excited now writing about all my goals for 2010. Once I’m back doing my regular training, I’ll post some more details. For now all I’m going to say is that I want to PR in the half-marathon in late winter / early spring and have a decent Ironman in Frankfurt, “running the run”. That should be another PR (marathon within an IM .. currently at 4:36), maybe another one for the full IM (currently 11:58). A long way to go!

Good knee news .. but no race on Sunday

2009-11-26T22:00:00.000+01:00

Went to the doctor to let him have a look at my knee. Mainly, I wanted to make sure what was going on and if this would have an impact on my next season’s Ironman plans …

It was the first time I went to this specific doctor, but felt very comfortable. He manipulated my knee quite a bit, but other than the swelling and the resulting inability to properly bend and extend the knee, it wasn’t too uncomfortable. He then went on to take ultrasound pictures and soon gave me the good news that my knee was okay. Based on what he was telling me, I had torn my posterior cruciate ligament twelve years ago, which is something that is not operated on even today. So absolutely no need for an operation.

But what caused the swelling? Based on the ultrasound, I had torn some muscle fibers in my quadriceps muscle which caused a lot of fluid build-up. Here’s the picture:

I’m not sure I got everything he explained, but here’s as best as I understood it. The picture is taken from the knee (on the top right you can still see a bit of the kneecap) up the femur. The top is where my skin is, the bottom goes “into” the thigh towards the bone. On the bottom you can see the femur, on the top you can see the quadriceps. In between is a big “black hole” which is the fluid that has built up.

This fluid will get slowly absorbed by the muscle and weaken the muscle for a bit. Therefore, even when the swelling is gone, the muscle is not yet back to its original strength, it takes a bit longer for the muscle to properly heal.

He estimates about two weeks for the swelling to be completely gone. I can slowly start some training once I can fully extend the knee, but I should start slowly and carefully in order not to hurt the muscle again (like I did last time). A start in Ratzeburg this Sunday is totally out of the picture, I wouldn’t be able to run very well and would be in grave danger to really hurt myself. (Plus, it won’t be any fun at all to have an injury “out in the boonies”.) So I’ll give myself some extra rest this time and figure out how to get back on track during December.

Some good news and some bad news. But I’m totally relived that it’s not anything serious, and that I can still go ahead with my racing plans for 2010!

.. still on!

Another setback

2009-11-22T23:00:00.001+01:00

On Friday, I hurt my knee again. Not a chance of running this weekend .. probably means that I can forget my race next Sunday in Ratzeburg. I’m really pooped and disappointed.

But now the first order of business is to find out what’s causing this and what I can do about it. There’s no way I can train for an Ironman like this. So I’ve scheduled an doctor’s appointment tomorrow. Hopefully he can give me some more background on what is going on.

In the meantime, I’m reading up on knee injuries, ACL tears and so on. Not exactly encouraging literature …

Weighty Issues – Mid November Update

2009-11-16T22:00:00.000+01:00

After taking a little injury break, it’s time to fess up … so here is my latest update from the weight front.

Another photo by radialmoster

Official weigh in Nov 16th: 88.3kg; 17.7% body fat

My goal was to get under 88kg at the end of October. I was hovering around that mark when I hurt my knee, and had a full week of no sport, “tricky situations” with a business trip and conference, and quite a bit of worries and frustration. Then another week of slowly ramping up my training, so I’ve lost two full weeks (which corresponds to one pound at my goal rate of 1kg a month). No magic is going to help me get that back, so I’m relaxing my goals a little bit .. as December will be a bit tricky as well, I’m shooting for under 87kg at the end of December now.

Of course, I’m a bit disappointed, but I think I have realized where my mistakes were and am ready to be better. The frustration led to some poor decisions, but I’ve also gotten a bit less strict in my diet. This makes it hard to get the weight down, especially around all the extra goodies that float around at this time of the season. So, I have to save the treats for the special occasions and not make them a regular, almost daily occurrence.

What has me a bit puzzled is that my weight seems to be moving all over the place. I’m stepping on the scales almost every morning, and I’m seeing shifts of three to four pounds from one day to the next. While some of this is pretty normal, I don’t really have a good explanation for these larger movements, sometimes I eat pretty late in the day, sometimes I have to get up a bit earlier and so on. But four pounds?! All of this makes it pretty tricky to evaluate where I am which sometimes gives me an extra excuse (or extra frustration) for another goodie. Weird.

I’m a bit worried that all my lofty weight goals are starting to get eroded little by little. At the end of last season I had identified weight as one of the areas I have to work on, and I hope I can remain committed to my goals of getting down to a decent race weight by summer. I hope that making my goals public in this blog helps me keep myself honest and focused on this goal. Hopefully, with my knee better, I can get back on track. I’ll keep you posted …

Fun Fall Run

2009-11-15T22:56:00.001+01:00

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, then some more steep trails
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!

Slowly getting back on track

2009-11-10T22:20:00.001+01:00

The picture in this post is a cool word-art of all the words in my blog’s feed, done on http://www.wordle.net/create. I really like what you can do on this site!

I hope that my knee swelling was nothing more than a little scare. I took a whole week off, but I got more and more movement back. By Saturday, I was so ready to get back to running, but anxious that my knee would act up and I’d have to turn around after a few minutes. Luckily, everything felt okay and I ran for 30 minutes without any problems. On Sunday, I did another 40 minutes, and was quite relieved.

I’m giving myself this week to get back in shape and will not do anything really hard. (Today’s one hour run was quite sufficient to get me tired, thank you.) This will give me about ten hard days (a week and two weekends) to get in shape for Ratzeburg, but at this point I’m just happy if I can continue to train for IM Germany next summer. I’ll reassess what I can do in Ratzeburg after that.

The one thing that really bugs me is that in my frustration I neglected to take care of my nutrition. I’ve also had quite a bit of work to do and went on a business trip on Thursday and Friday. I haven’t gained too much weight (and it’s coming off quickly now that I’m running again), but my weight loss goals for October and probably also for November are out of the window. I'll write my “weighty issues update” next weekend, but I’m already setting things back a bit. Strange how these things take a back seat when other, more important issues are coming up …

For now, being able to run again is the most important thing. I was really missing that feeling of strapping on the shoes and getting some fresh air! Now, if I was only as fast as this guy …

Happy Halloween ... and an injury setback?

2009-10-31T21:50:00.001+01:00

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

2009-10-26T22:00:00.000+01:00

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

2009-10-22T21:36:00.001+02:00

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

2009-10-14T20:00:00.000+02:00

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

2009-10-11T00:25:00.001+02:00

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

2009-10-05T22:00:00.001+02:00

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!

Half-Marathon Alstertal

2009-09-28T22:00:00.001+02:00

Sunday, I was racing the second leg of my Autumn campaign, a half-marathon along the river Alster in Hamburg.

Photo by Haemmboerger

It was a great day for a running race – a perfect sunny autumn day. After the morning fog cleared, the sun came out and it was nice and warm, but not too hot. My guess for the temperature was around 20°C – about 72°F.

Race report

I was going into the race with a goal of running sub-1:40 which translates to a 4:45 pace. After my speed session on Tuesday, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to manage going that fast. But I was very confident to be able to go 5min/k pace which would be sub-1:45. So I decided to build my speed during the race, but still start reasonably fast to run a good time.

I was warming up while it was still pretty cold (the sun hadn’t come out yet), but I was already getting thirsty. So before starting I made sure to sip some extra water. (I had already decided not to race with my FuelBelt and left it at home.) By the time the race started, the sun was out in full force and it was getting quite toasty.

During the first k of the race, the pace was quite slow as there were still slower people in front of me. (Both because I lined up with a couple of friends towards the back, and you have the usual slower people that want to start at the front.) Passed the first k in about 5:30, but then it was thinning out quite well and I didn’t really have a problem to run my pace.

After the first 5k (split: just over 24 minutes) I had made up the time lost in the first k and I knew I was on track for a decent time. During the second 5k I tried to pace myself – I knew that more hills were to come and it was still a bit to go. Also, I got these usual doubts .. “I’m going pretty fast, not sure if I can hold this for another 15k”.

But everything went well. I was able to pick up the effort and the pace a bit, and by the 15k mark I knew that I had 1:45 pretty much in the bag, but I probably wouldn’t be able to make it in sub-1:40. I was working pretty hard and picking up quite a few people, but the last two k or so are just borderline hard. I managed to come in after 1:40:39 (by my own watch), well spent and needing a few minutes to get my breath and smile back.

I was pretty happy with the way things worked out, I managed to pick up the pace and effort ( even if it wasn’t quite enough to go sub-1:40). I felt pretty strong during the race, and I hope that my training during the next few weeks allows me to get some more faster next time around.

Racing with a GPS watch

This was also my first race with my new GPS watch, and I was looking forward to seeing how accurate the GPS data would be. Most of the race course was under pretty thick tree cover, so it would be quite hard work for the GPS unit. Also, having run the race quite often in past years, I knew that the race course would be pretty accurately measured, so it was a good basis for comparison. If the course was off at all, it was long, especially with the little deviation made necessary by building activities.

The GPS track ended up being a bit off course (maybe by 10 or 15 meters). The following screenshot from Google Earth shows the out and back section that were on the same path on the upper bank of the river that shines through the trees:

But I don’t think that this is really an issue. The total distance as measured was 20.49k – compared to the half-marathon distance of 21.1k it was maybe 3% percent off. For distance, that is not really a problem – 3% accuracy is probably much better than what you can get from any other way of measuring or guesstimating. It’s also good to know that the GPS distance is shorter than the “real” distance. My explanation for that is that there were quite a few turns on the course, and with positions saved every 10 meters or so, some of these turns get “flattened out” – makes sense to me.

But looking at this 3% accuracy gets tricky when you want to pace off the GPS unit, especially at the “sharper end” of my speed. 3% at a 5min/k pace is a difference of almost 10 seconds. This can make a big difference. I’m also not sure if the pace that the watch displays is going be “slower” than the real pace. When looking at the watch, the pace I was seeing was almost always quicker than the real pace. So, the pace displayed is a good indicator, but certainly not good enough to pace off it. “Perceived Effort”, HR and clock time with the course markers still seems to be more reliable. But the GPS is one more measurement that may point to being off, and it will be sufficient to keep the pace in check during the first few k’s in the IM marathon.

All in all, the Garmin 405 passed this test easily. I’m still very much impressed with the unit!

Thoughts on my training before this weekends half-marathon race in Alstertal

2009-09-25T12:00:00.000+02:00

This Sunday, I’ll be running my next race: The half-marathon in Alsteral. It’s a pretty nice race, most of it on a packed-dirt path along the river Alster. “Along a river” sounds like a flat race, but there is not too much space along the river, so there are a lot of ups and downs on the banks of the river. Definitely not a PR course. I’ll post some GPS data from my Garmin 405 after the race.

(Photo by mike warren)

The best time I have run there is a 1:38:30, and I would like to be able to run in that neighborhood. They had to change the course a bit this year, and it sounds like this means another few hills, so I’m not sure how comparable the times will be. Sub-1:40 should be possible, but the race is a B or C priority, so I’m not too focused on a specific time – I just want to run a nice, focused race at a faster pace than in my regular training.

Mixed Intervals

Speaking of my training, I’m really enjoying the new possibilities with the 405. This Tuesday, I was doing some mixed interval session. I was trying to do the following faster parts:

2k @ marathon pace (~5:00 min/k)
2k @ half-marathon pace (~4:30)
1 mile @ 10k pace (~4:10)
1k @ 5k pace (sub 4:00)
800 @ “really fast pace” (no idea .. maybe ~3:30?)

In between these segments there were 3 minutes “active recovery”, so some walking and easy jogging. (Advanced versions of this have shorter recoveries, but I’m certainly not ready for that.)

Maybe I don’t have a good understanding of my paces at this point, but as soon as I got to 10k pace, it was getting really hard. Anything faster than 10k pace was almost impossible, and I had to bail after 500m at 4 min pace. No top-end at all!!

So shorter, faster intervals will definitely be something I have to work on. As I have another 10k race in two weeks, I would like to do some interval sessions at 5k and faster paces. I hope that I don’t have to go to a track but that my 405 allows me to do sessions such as these on the road:

5 * 400m @ 3k pace
4 * 1k @5k pace

The total distance for these runs would be around 10k total.

I’ll do some running at 10k pace, but that will be more like a Tempo Run rather than fast, short intervals. A sample session would be 2-3 * 1 Mile at 10k pace within a longish run (maybe 13k).

Focusing on “Short&Fast”

All of this goes to show that my training focus has changed a bit (and I’m still struggling with it). While in the first part of the year I was doing longer and longer runs at a leisurely pace, now I’m trying to shake things up a bit by focusing on short and fast stuff.

Hopefully this will allow me to loose some weight as well. I’m still in line for my end-of-September goal of sub-89 kg …

Thoughts on Training Toys and the Garmin 405

2009-09-21T22:40:00.001+02:00

Last week, I’ve bought my new sports watch. Of course it’s not a simple LCD watch, but a heart-rate GPS-enabled Garmin 405:

Garmin GPS Forerunner 405 mit Herzfrequenzsensor, schwarz

Before making the purchase, I was thinking about my relationship to these toys. In the past, I’ve bought a decent Polar watch (an S410 which was a top-of-the-line model HRM back when I bought it in 2002), a bike (in 2004), a FuelBelt or two, an Ergomo power meter (in 2006), a Camelbak, tons of shoes, socks, shirts and shorts and a lot of other smaller/cheaper gizmos. My parents joke a lot about the fact that I always have the best equipment available. On one hand – looking from people outside the sport, that is probably true: When I spend as much time as I do on my hobby, I want to use tools to help me get better or just enjoy the activity a bit more. (One can certainly argue if the tools did indeed help me get faster, but that’s another discussion.) So yes, I’ve been spending quite some money on “toys”. On the other hand – comparing myself to people in the sport, I don’t think that I’m atypical. My bike (bought in 2004) is probably one of the cheapest bikes in any IM-distance transition zone. A lot of friends have bought three bikes in the meantime and spent a lot more on race wheels. I also think that my purchases are not mainly for flash. So I think that I don’t have to be ashamed of plunking down 240€ for my Garmin 405.

Short Review of the Garmin 405

Now that I’ve had the 405 for about a week, I’m really impressed with the GPS watch. I didn’t run into problems other people have noted (GPS pickup is quick and operation is reliable so far). I’m still a bit skeptical about the battery life of the unit (advertised as 8 hours in GPS mode), but for the normal training runs (still under two hours at this point of the season) this is not an issue.

Here’s a list of the things I really like:

Distance appears to be pretty accurate, even under trees
Some people noted that when running in a forest the track is off. For me, it’s working fine so far, even when I’m running in our nice forested areas under a thick canopy of leaves.
Feedback on pace is almost instantaneous
Any changes in pace are picked up pretty fast by the unit – so you always know how fast you’re running (in “meaningful” units such as min/k – or min/miles for the US/British people).
HR is working reliably
My “old” Polar watch had some problems near power lines and the train tracks (not much of a problem, but a bit annoying), the Garmin is not having these issues at all.
Setup is not too difficult
At first the setup is a bit tricky, but I’ve got things down pretty well now. Usability is as good as the Polar (and much better comparing to other watches I’ve seen).
Transferring data to the PC works
After installing the required software, transferring data to the PC (and the Garmin program) is automatic. I never got the transfer working on my old Polar, with the Garmin it’s a total non-issue .. just move the watch close to the ANT+ receiver, and everything works automatically. Really well done, even easier than synching an iPod!
Export to Google Earth is easy and cool
Seeing your running route on a Google Earth blows my mind every time. This was impossible only a few years ago, now it’s a snap.

Already I’m starting to plan different sessions that what I was doing before. One big benefit for me is that I’m much more flexible in doing interval sessions. I don’t have easy access to a nice track, but I still want to add more speed stuff to my training. With the new watch I can do all kinds of intervals at different lengths (both time and distance) and speeds and will be able to get feedback if I’m running the speeds I want to.

Hopefully this will help me get faster in the next months!

Racing a shorter race – Volkslauf Bad Segeberg (9k)

2009-09-14T19:42:00.001+02:00

This Sunday, I was doing the first race of my “rest of 2009” campaign. It was a 10k type of race around a lake in Bad Segeberg, a beautiful off-road race 20 minutes from where I live:

In the two weeks after my long vacation/break, I just managed to get back to regular running. My fitness had gone quite a lot during the vacation, so I was happy to manage a one hour run in my training without too many issues. Four or five relatively short runs per week, some cycling – that was all that was possible. Certainly no speed work, but hopefully I’ll be able to do that now. But back to the race …

The official distance of the race was 9.5k, but I was looking through last year’s results and the times seemed to be really good – so I was assuming that the race was short. I hadn’t run there before, but I spoke with some friends that were there in the previous years and their guess was just under 9k. I didn’t go with any specific time goal into the race as I didn’t know where I was. I just wanted to run a nice hard race and maybe come in under 40 minutes (more because of the nice round number rather than a specific pace goal).

When I got to the race site, I immediately ran into some friends I hadn’t seen since my last race (Reinfeld Swim/Run). Sure feels good to catch up to what’s going on, talking plans for the next season and exchanging some trash talk. After collecting my race number I went for an easy warmup – just looking at the first (and last) k of the race course. After a little section on roads through town down to the lake the rest of the course was on a nice little path around the lake. As it was “around the lake” I assumed there wouldn’t be too many hills, but some ups and downs were to be expected …

The race

When the gun went off, I settled into a pretty fast clip. I usually don’t start at the very front but maybe a quarter back. So in the first few ks I was overtaking quite a few people that didn’t really belong to the front of the race. After about the first k I had a few people around me that were about my level (well, my usual level when I’m a bit more fit) so I was quite happy with were I was. First “official” 3k were under 12 minutes (short!) and my HR was around 160 – right were I wanted to be.

But alas, I had started a bit too fast. At about five k there were some short, steep uphill sections and I pretty much fell apart – even walking for a short stretch at one of the steeper hills. I still managed to keep my HR at the same level, but my pace dropped to around 4:30/k pace (k’s as posted, again short). Some people started to overtake me, and there was nothing I could do. I managed to keep my HR up, but my pace didn’t get any faster. At the end I was pretty spent and finished in 40:22.

Analysis

So, what do I make of this? Obviously, I’m a little bit “out of form”, but that’s not unexpected (but still a bit sobering). Also, as I haven’t been racing shorter races for quite a while, I have to do a bit of relearning on how to properly pace such a distance and I also need to do some faster training to be able to properly race such a distance. The fact that I could hold my HR was a good sign that I could focus for the race distance. I just need to get better at running fast ..

Converting my time back to the “guesstimated” 9k distance, I’m right at 4:30/k pace. I was hoping that I’d be able to run at that pace in two week’s half-marathon – I think that will be tricky. (I was hoping to run better than my course record at the race which is a 1:38 – around 4:40min/k.) For now, there is nothing else for me to do than to continue training as planned and see how much I manage to get back in the next two weeks. After all, I’ve just started training again … and I still enjoy that a lot!

It’ll be interesting to see how soon my training is going to show results …

Planning the rest of 2009

2009-09-11T20:00:00.000+02:00

When discussing my season plan with Mitch from CounterpartCoaching, I described my goal for 2010 and the upcoming IM race as “run the run”. I also said that I’d be happy with my slowest IM times in swimming (1:18) and cycling (6:23) and then have a decent marathon (4:10) which would allow me to PR (currently at 11:58).

General Goals

Mitch told me that with these goals the best use of my time was to focus on weight loss and running for the rest of 2009. At first, I had thought to get back into a more balanced, tri-like training plan as I had focused on my running for the first part of the year with the ultra marathon in May. He said that my bike can be quickly built up to a decent level within a relatively short time in spring and that swimming doesn’t really matter anyways. If I built up some bike fitness in the fall, I’d loose most of that fitness in the winter anyways.

Also, as I want to loose some weight (see last weeks blog post on weighty issues), he said it would be a bad idea to take December as easy, unstructured training.

Instead, I’ve set the following goals for the rest of the year 2009:

weight loss (get down to under 86kg by the end of the year)
shorter, faster races (some 10ks, which I haven’t run for a while) and the accompanying training (interval sessions, tempo runs, etc.)
volume through frequency

This is the way my training plan looks like when put on a calendar:

1st half of September

Get back into regular training after my vacation. Add some biking and swimming (if time allows). At the end of the phase, I’ve put a 9 point something running race – my first shorter race in quite a while.

2nd half of September

Increase the length of my “long” run and overall volume. Continue with swim and bike as time allows. At the end of the month, there is a “traditional” half marathon race I’m going to do again and meet a couple of old friends.

At the end of September, I want to be “back in swing” and run a PR on the course (currently 1:38:30 – I’ve run faster half marathons, but the course is not too easy and it was in spring when really preparing). Weight goal is under 89kg.

1st half of October

Add some interval sessions to the mix and work on my speed. Three hard running sessions in two weeks – one longer run with some faster sections, one interval session (1k repeats or so) and probably another interval run with some tempo segments (for example 3*7 min at half-marathon pace or something similar). Starting in October, I want to get into a better swimming shape, so I can start swimming in my squad by November when the new “winter season” starts.

I’ve also got another short race lined up on October 11th .

2nd half of October

Next two weeks, probably similar to the first two weeks in October. Another possible half-marathon race (Oct 25th), maybe find a 10k race instead. Weight goal for end of October: under 88kg.

November

At the end of November there is a big race that I want to do really well. It’s a very popular, beautiful 26k race around a large lake in Ratzeburg. Because of the time of year, usually I’m not very well prepared for it. This year I have a chance to really prepare for it in November rather than just start doing longer runs again. It would be great to complete the race in under 2 hours which would be a huge PR for the course (currently at 2:09h).

After the October race, there are five weeks to the November race. I’ll probably take a couple of easier days after the October race. Also, I’ll want to freshen up for the race – almost another week. This gives me three full weeks (maybe including four weekends) of training. Within this time, I want to do about five hard sessions (two longer runs with some tempo, two short intervals, one mixed session). If I can set it up, maybe I’ll do a track session with some pretty short fast sections (400m or so).

Weight goal for end of November: under 87kg.

December

Not totally sure what to in December. I’ll probably do a 10k race on Dec 31st to end the year, but that will be more “fun” than “performance” oriented. Maybe I’ll find another 10k race earlier in the month, but at that time of the year there are not too many attractive, close-by races.

So what I’m thinking about is doing a personal challenge of 31 run sessions in 31 days. As there are some days where I probably won’t be able to run, this would require a couple of “doubles”. But it’ll be interesting to see how my body will hold up.

Any suggestion you can think of to improve my plan?

Weighty Issues

2009-09-06T22:00:00.000+02:00

My wife and I just came back from our long, wonderful vacation. After stepping on my scales, I was back in real life.

When I left, I was at 88kg (morning weight). The first time I stepped in my scales, I was at 94 point something. Some it was extra water from the long flight back, and I was hoping to get a bit further down once things got back into balance.

It took about a week .. and I came in at a bit over 91kg – which means I gained 3kg in a four week vacation. A bit too much, but certainly better than the 6kg I had to assume after my first weighing in. Also, pretty typical for the usual gain I experience on vacation when I more or less shut down my training. (All I managed this year was three runs.)

So I’ve got my work cut out for me. I haven’t had much success loosing weight in the last years, but by now I’m more or less convinced that I won’t make much progress unless I significantly reduce my weight. Maybe stating the goals publicly (well, as public as my blog is ;-)) will help me keep honest.

I’ve raced my best IM-distance race in Roth 2007 at roughly 85kg and 15% fat on my scale (specific fat numbers not too exact, but good as a basis for comparison). I want to be way under that for next year’s IM, which means that one important goal for the rest of this year will be “body composition”. I’ve got almost four months left, so it would be great to get down to the same numbers at the end of the year. For the race, I’d like to race at 82kg. I hope that the hard training for IM will help take care of things in 2010.

To sum up:

	weight	fat
today	91kg	21%
end of 2009	85kg	15%
end of June 2010	82kg	<14%

Please help me committed to these goals! I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

Race Report Marathon 2008

2009-08-31T20:00:00.001+02:00

Ran my spring marathon today. In an earlier post I described being just a little bit anxious - I wanted to finally break 3:30 after 18 years of trying. I had trained well, and I believed I could finally do it. Mitch gave me the quote "believing is the first step" on my way ...

The day wasn't really good for running. It was raining a lot in the days before and there were some muddy sections on the course. Today, we had some more rain, low hanging clouds, and temperatures in the 40s. Usually, nobody is out on a day like this, but I hardly noticed it.

The course was four rolling loops, mostly paved streets and bicycle paths, but also some muddy trails. The first 5k were a bit easier than the second - except for one "major" uphill, but there wasn't really any flat section on the whole course.

The first loop I tried to go out "easy" and leave myself enough power for the rest of the race:

* 00-05k: 25:39 HR136

* 05-10k: 25:35 HR140

So far so good - I pretty much stayed to my HR guidelines (135, then 140) and I felt okay - maybe a bit wet I was just a bit slower than the 5min/k pace I was hoping for.

The second loop was similar:

* 10-15k: 24:29 HR140

* 15-20k: 24:43 HR142

My HR was okay, but the pace was still a bit slow. When I ran by my wife, she told me to pick it up a bit or else ... I believed I could break 3:30 on this day, so I decided to give me a few extra beats.

Third loop:

* 20-25k: 24:40 HR142 (including a 30 second pit stop, so I was getting a bit faster!)

* 25-30k: 24:54 HR145

Even though I was a bit disappointed with the last 5k, I was still right on the bubble of my 3:30 goal. I passed 30k in 2:30:02, so I basically needed to make up a minute on my 5min/k pace. Two years ago, when running the same race, I was about a minute and a half faster at this point, but I basically knew that my race was over that day. Today, I believed I still had it in me and went on to run

* 30-35k: 24:18 HR147

All right! Just twenty more seconds to make up! I really believed I could do it now. I even took the time to walk a few steps after the last aid station (37k) to make sure I get enough Coke down so I could power the rest ..

* 35-40k: 25:00 HR148

Things were getting really hard now. The rest was mostly downhill, so I believed that although I had absolutely nothing left in me, I could get things done.

* 40-finish: 10:11 HR153

giving me a finish time of 3:29:31! I did it!

Although I was hoping to be able to run a 3:25, I'm totally glad the way the race worked out. I was able to pick up the pace when I needed, and I don't think I could have gone any faster on this day. What else can you ask for!

Race Report Roth 2007

2009-08-24T20:00:00.001+02:00

The "Quelle Challenge Roth" was my second IM distance race. It is one of the classic triathlon races and is very well organized. Usually, a lot of excellent athletes show up, and every long distance triathlete not totally focused on IM Hawaii and qualifying for it should take part in Roth at least once!

In my first race, IM Germany in Frankfurt two years earlier, I finished in 12:26 without running into any major issues. I swam a 1:13, rode a 6:21 and ran a 4:42 (plus some change for transitions).

I was hoping to improve quite a bit on that time, as I had a very solid preparation with some more volume than in my first IM. Also, Mitch made sure that I added a lot of running while keeping my bike and swimming at record levels.

Swim

The swim in Roth is in the Main-Donau-Canal - no problems at all with navigation - just go straight with two turns.

The spectators are quite close, I even heard my wife shout out some encouragement and she managed to take a photo of me. Also, there is a wave start, so things are quite civilized.

My swim was quite relaxed, tried not to waste any energy. Had a little cramp in my calf, but when I stopped it went right away. Strange, never had that before.

Ended up swimming 1:11:31 - I had hoped for a 1:10, but no need to worry.

Bike

After a quick transition (no change of clothes this time!) I was riding away. The course in Roth is very beautiful, through small villages and with quite some undulations - never boring. My personal highlight was the "Solarer Berg", one of the big spectator spots. Probably 15 to 20 thousand (!) people line a one kilometer, pretty steep hill. The elite racers had started more than an hour before me, so I - being on my first loop - was passed by Macca and Thomas Hellriegel alredy on their second loop shortly before the Solarer Berg. The crowd was still buzzing and cheering the other racers on. Then it got even louder, and I was barely able to hear the honking of the camera motor cycle filming the third rider Eneko Llanos flying by me. It was pretty close - almost like at the Tour de France where the spectators only open a little space right before the rider almost crashes into them.

My bike time was just a few seconds over 6 hours (maybe I shouldn't have stopped quite so often to pee), which was still a big improvement over my Frankfurt time. I tried to eat as much as possible and to ride as steady as possible, but it was very tricky with all the hills and I had some fade towards the end.

Some Ergomo data: 1st loop 209AP 235NP 31.5 km/h; 2nd loop 198AP 226NP 30.1 km/h (plus a short relaxed ride into T2).

Run

I took some time in T2 to get some sunscreen and for a toilet stop. Saw my wife, my parents and some friends right when I started the run. The plan was to run the first 5 to 8k very relaxed and to get my HR to under 125. I managed to do that quite well (even walked a bit on one of the short, steeper uphills). I had some spikes, but cooled down, was eating and tried to relax as much as possible. Also, my pace was okay - just a bit under 6 minutes per k.

After the 8k mark, I had planned to run with my HR at about 130, with a cap of 135. I eased into the higher HRs, and my pace got considerably faster (under 5:30/k). I was feeling absolutely great and probably overpaced "a bit". By the half marathon mark, when I ran by my fans, I already had some doubts if I could hold that pace. After 25k, I just exploded.

I had to walk most of the next 10k which took me 1h25. I tried a couple of things (1 min run/walk, counting steps, drinking Coke), but nothing really worked. I don't know what it was, but around the 35k mark I tried some more running. I at least wanted to try to improve my Frankfurt time. Everyone who has ever done an IM knows that the advanced math to calculate what pace you have to run to reach your goal time is impossible at this point. All I managed is that walking in would not be enough .. so I continued to run. Strangely, it worked and after a bit I was able to get back to running a 6 minute pace. Again I was not able to figure out where exactly I would end up .. somewhere around 12 hours ... maybe I could still break 12 hours?! I ran on ...

I got the finish line, was very happy to see my wife and my parents and made sure to take some time to wave at them. At that point - if my watch was correct - I would be able to sneak under the 12 hour mark with just a minute to spare .. When I actually got to the finish line and saw the clock at 13:03:something .. I was surprised but managed to do the math .. I had started exactly 1 hour and 5 minutes after the elite .. so my time was 11:58 - YES!!!

My official finish time was 11:58:48 with a marathon of 4:36. So I managed to improve in all three parts - four PRs in one race! But did I race to the best of my abilities? Probably not ...

What’s next (from 2005)

2009-08-17T20:00:00.000+02:00

Note: This is an article that was written in 2005 after I completed my first IM. In hindsight, some of the goals look a bit ambitious, but I’m still thinking in the direction of “Let’s try to get better”. Also the goal of getting to closer to qualify for IM Hawaii is still active. It may just take a little while longer …

Where I’m coming from

In 2001, I was an out-of-shape, overweight (104 kg), middle-age (33 years) man getting married. In 2005, I'm four years older, happily married, and finished my first IM in 12:26h, having lost 18kg of weight. So what's next for me?

A lot of things can happen. I may find a new job that truly excites me again, my wife and I might finally manage to have a kid, but these things are not truly within my control. As I've drawn a lot of satisfaction from my athletic development in the last years, I've decided to set myself a lofty goal in this area. I've decided to call it "Sub-10 in '10" – which should also get me close to being able to qualify for Kona.

As noted above, there are a few things that could make this goal less important, I may not be able to get that fast and I don't want to take things literally (a 9:52 in '11 would be great as well ;-)) but as a reference point, I really like the catchy phrase.

First, a short look at my progression over the last years:

Season	Total (h)	Swim (h/km)	Bike (h/km)	Run (h/km)	A Races
01/02	145h	-	-	145h	Marathon in 4:26
02/03	271h	20h 50	64h 1671	173h 1755	Marathon in 3:52, First Oly (2:38)
03/04	387h	80h 187	116h 3023	174h 1763	Marathon in 3:39, First Half IM (5:04)
04/05	435h	85h 202	173h 4501	149h 1535	First IM in 12:26:57

Sub-10 in ‘10

To go sub-10 means something along the lines of 1hr Swim, 5:20 Bike, 3:30 Run, plus 5 Min in each transition. This year my times were Swim 1:13, T1 7:43, Bike 6:20:39, T2 3:21, Run 4:42:12.

So, what does it take to get me closer to Sub-10?

As last year was close to what was tolerated at home and at work, I don't think I can do more than last 2005. Ultimately, that may limit how fast I can get and I may have to rethink that number along the way, but for now I'd like to try not to break anything by increasing my training load.

I feel the biggest improvement for me will have to be on the bike .. that will require increasing the volume and become much more powerful than I am now. What should I be doing here? "JFT" is my main idea. I'm not sure whether I would benefit from "toys" like a power meter. Upwards of 800$ is a pretty hefty investment if there is not that much of a benefit for me.

The run .. obviously, I will have to improve here as well, but I think at least I know what to do to get there. Run often, and get a bit faster while get fitter and leaner.

Which brings me to the next issue – weight (body composition is the political correct term ;-)). At 1.80m (6ft?) I'm still "a bit" overweight with 86kg (192 lbs?) on race day. I've improved over the last years, but progress has been so slow and even not really there this year that I feel there is a lot to do here.

Swim .. probably the easiest. I've managed a very relaxed 1:13 on two times per week. As I have excellent form I regard the volume I can put in as my main limiter here. I think that I will see huge improvements if I manage to swim 3 times or more per week. If getting to Kona requires me to swim twice in the morning before going to work, I think I can do that. For 2006, I may sacrifice winter swimming for some time in the weight room. I've never done any lifting before and feel that I may need a new stimulus – especially considering my bike focus.

Which leaves .. race execution. I think for my first race, Mitch helped me build a race plan for my capabilities and made me feel comfortable with that plan on race day. I deviated a bit from it (the classic rookie mistakes – started a bit hard on the bike, ran the first loop of the run a bit too fast), but all in all it went pretty good. I think I'm "smart enough" to get to Hawaii – what I don't know is if I can get fit enough.

What should I do in 2006?

The overall volume .. I think I'll shoot for about 400 hours, but I would like to be more consistent than last year when a good week was almost always followed by a week with smaller volume. I'd like to enhance my basic week so that I get in about 8 hours per week almost automatically, so when I do the larger sessions for my marathon or ½ IM prep, I'm almost guaranteed to go over ten hours without any undue stress.

As a gesture to my wife I've decided to have my next IM in 2007, so 2006 should be a base year and mainly about having fun. Training and racing in the last years was a blast. I was setting PRs left and right – let's see how long that continues! So I want to PR in most of my running races, 10k (41:45 – would love to go sub-40), half marathon (1:34:31 – would love to get close to 1:30h) and marathon (3:39:31 – should be able to go sub 3:30). These are my goals for the first part of the year up to March (marathon is end of April). During this time, I should have some minimum weekly time for biking (probably 2 hours per week) and as noted above I'm thinking of doing weights instead of swimming.

The rest of the year I want to focus on biking. Starting during the taper for the marathon, I want to get as many bike-hours in as possible. I've already signed up for "Vätternrondan" in mid-June, the world's largest bike "race", a 300km non-stop loop around a lake in Sweden.

Depending on vacation, I would like to end my season with my A-triathlon, possibly a half IM in late August (with a big PR, as well – 10 to 15 minute improvement over my time from 2004). Leading up to that, I would like to do a few more triathlons and maybe some bike races, too.

After my main triathlon, have some more fun running races to finish the year.

Race Report IM Germany 2005

2009-08-10T20:00:00.001+02:00

Before the race

As usual, the last few days before leaving for the race were pretty hectic. I managed to get an easy run in on Monday evening. On Tuesday, it was raining hard, so I took my MTB for an easy 60 minute ride and got totally soaked. Wednesday was a little bit better, so I got a nice easy swim in. I guess all the work and other things that needed to be done helped me to avoid doing anything hard. Wednesday evening was spent packing and getting my race plan done so I could send it off to Mitch for review.

My wife and I drove down to Frankfurt on Thursday. There was a lot of traffic and it rained hard, so it wasn't very relaxing to drive. We drove the last part of the bike course I hadn't seen when I did recon in May, and managed to get to the race office half an hour before they closed. I picked up all my stuff, picked up the gels I still needed for the race and were amazed about the stands that were being erected at the finish line on the "Römer", the old part of downtown Frankfurt. Then we drove another 45 mins to our friend Marcus we'd be staying at, had Pizza for dinner and were happy to go to bed.

On Friday I got up early to go out to "Langener Waldsee" where the swim was. They opened up at 8 and I was in the water by 8:10 with a bunch of Canadians. The lake was very nice to swim in. As I didn't want to go through the hassle of cleaning and drying my wetsuit, I swam without my wetsuit, but it was nice and warm. Official water temp on Sunday was 22°C, but it felt even warmer. Got back to our friend and had some nice breakfast with my wife. Then a quick nap, some lunch and the it was off to the race briefing. Nothing new, but I guess you have to be there just in case something interesting comes up. Then back to downtown to meet with most of my "fan group". Both my cousins with their wife and husband had come down, and we talked a bit with them.

Also met the other three people (Sybille, Sven and Stefan) from my club that were doing the race. Lots of good wishes from everyone to everyone. There is a lot of respect between those committed to do the race. After an hour, we drove back out to our friend and had a big pasta meal to carbo load for the race.

On Saturday we slept in until 9am. Afterwards I set up my bike and went out for what was planned to be an easy spin. It turned out to be very hilly were our friend lives so I ended up riding pretty hard for the first 15 minutes to get up the first hill. Then I managed to find a nice loop – another 15 minutes easy, then 15 minutes downhill coasting. The legs felt really good, the bike was okay, only the cable of my computer was cut so the computer didn't work. No problem, I still had enough time to get a replacement before bike check-in. Some leftover pasta for lunch, then finish my bags for the check-in. Throw everything in the car, then drive to the swim start. On the way stop at a bike shop I had seen, get a new computer cable. Borrow some equipment at the race site to properly mount it on my bike, then stand a bit in line for check-in. Saw Stefan, Sven and Sybille when I left and we encouraged each other some more. Just got a bit hot as the sun had come out in full force by now. Then drive back, eat and dink some more stuff, watch Tour de France, answer some phone calls from some other friends coming to watch the race. My father cut his vacation a bit short to be able to come to Frankfurt, and we had two more people from my tri club and Mom & Dad of Sybille. Off to bed at 8:30, probably fell asleep by 8:45.

Race morning

Woke up at 3:10, a bit earlier than I had set my watch – really excited and anxious. Had a big breakfast (three egg omelet, two rolls with Honey, Nutella and cheese, a glass of OJ and some coffee with milk). Got everyone else out of bed, mixed my bottles, put the few remaining things in the car and we were off. Tina and Marcus dropped me at the swim start and went off to drop the car.

I checked my bike, put the bottles on the bike, pumped the tires. Some personal time to focus, again encourage Sven and Sybille (didn't see Stefan), then the volunteers started to urge people towards the swim start. I snuck into a portapotti (only short lines at this point!), then quickly put on my wetsuit and went into the water. Saw my cousin and two friends on the way. They played the national anthem, I edged easily toward the start line and I was pretty nervous …

Swim

The gun went off and everyone started swimming. An IM swim start seems to be proof of a shrinking universe, everyone seems to converge on you. Actually, it wasn't that bad. Some erratic swimmers, but I wanted to take the swim very easy, so I didn't have a problem in letting them pass when they were getting too close too often.

There was a quite a long way before the first turn, but it was still pretty congested and everyone had to breaststroke around the buoy. There is a short walk on land after the first half .. took my split – 34:45 – time okay – maybe the HR a little high. So relax a bit more and just go on. Second lap was just as uneventful, a bit longer, HR a little lower. Just got a bit bored towards the end, but that's okay I guess.

Time for the swim: 1:13:00 (302^nd in my AG)– smack in the middle of my planned range of 1:10 to 1:16. I was quite happy as everything had gone fine and I felt that I hadn't wasted any energy.

T1

After exiting the lake you have to go up a short but pretty steep hill to get to T1. I walked easy, a guy helped me open my wetsuit. Saw Marcus and Tina, took a swig of water, then found my bag.

With the help of a volunteer I took off my swim briefs (yes, I did use the tent!), put on my bike clothes and stuffed everything I didn't need in the bag. An easy walk/jog to the bike, grab my helmet, then off.

Time: 7:43 (373^rd in my AG, total 320^th in my AG)– a bit longer than planned, but what's a minute?

Bike

Tried to take things very easy at first. Put on my arm warmers (it was a bit overcast and still pretty cold). Stefan blew by me at the 10k mark – he had a very good swim! He "can't swim" – just started training half a year ago for the IM. But he is a great cyclist and runner. Originally he said it would take him until the 90k mark to get me. But as my swim time was okay, I wasn't concerned and just happy for him.

My HR went down quite well and I was soon under the 120 mark. After I saw Sybille's parents when I hit downtown Frankfurt at about the 14k mark, I started eating and soon the hills started. I was finding it really hard to keep my HR down and not to go too hard on the hills. Lots of people blowing by me, lots of spectator cheering, and from what I could see not a very good average speed. Up to the 60k mark I was seeing HRs in the mid-125s – my plan was to ride at sub-115 till 50k and then 115-120 with a cap of 125. At about 60k I stopped for to pee and that clear-headed minute allowed me to kick me and tell me to stay in my zones. That was a very good decision, on my way back to Frankfurt I realized that the first part was into the wind and more uphill than downhill, so I could really power on the way back. HR much better, average okay. Just didn't manage to get the hills up at sub-125 – just try to do that with people screaming at you and real Tour de France atmosphere! At the end of the first loop I flew by my fan-group and their cheering cheered me up even more.

The second loop went okay as well. Had to tell myself to properly stay in my zones a few times, but I managed to get my calories in quite well. At one point I ran out of water and things started to get hot. The sun had come out, I had taken off my arm-warmers. Took things a bit easier, took two bottles at the next aid station and didn't run into major issues. At the end of the second loop I got up to Sybille who is a stronger swimmer than me. We chatted a bit, I stopped and kissed Tina when we drove by, then the bike was over.

Time: 27:30 to Frankfurt (414^th/total 336^th), 1^st loop 2:55:17 (416^th, total 385^th), 2^nd loop 2:57:52 (381^st, total 385^th), total bike 6:20:39 (409^th in my AG)

T2

A volunteer took my bike, I got my bag and took some time to redress for the run – new shorts, singlet, socks, shoes plus my fuelbelt.

Time: 3:21 (332^nd in my AG), total time was 7:44:45 (383^rd in my AG)

(My thinking at this time: Great, you just have to run a 6 min/k average to go sub-12!)

Run

First loop (0-14k)

Was a bit faster than Sybille in T2 so I came out before her. Tried to start very easy, but it was quite warm and I found it very hard to get my HR down. After 2k there was a short downhill section in the shade, that was the first time I got my HR to under 135. I wanted to get it down to under 130 but I felt so slow. (I know, Rookie mistake.) At about 5k I stopped for a short pee and Sybille passed me. She slowly ran away and it took some willpower not to try to catch up to her and run with her. My HR was still too high! Passed my fans, and started to take in some gel from my fuelbelt.

Felt quite comfortable, but pretty hot. I had hoped to be able to run about a 4hr marathon, but my splits hovered at about 6 min/k. At the 10k mark, I decided to try to hold that pace. Still, my HR was hovering around 135 instead of around 130 and still too high for the 130-135 region I had in mind after the first loop. At the 13k turnaround I saw that Sybille had built her lead to about 1:30 mins – one more reason not to slow down now. I was about to pay for it …

Time: 1:25:41 (333^rd)

Second loop (14-28k)

I continued to run my 6 min pace, with my HR at 135+. I got even warmer, at about the 20k I mark I gave Tina my fuelbelt (I had downed most of the gel anyways) and felt briefly better without the weight. That lasted for 2 minutes or so – and on the long section in the sun I had to walk a bit. I decided to push a bit but had to walk again on an uphill section leading to a bridge. This was my "dark moment" and thoughts of having to walk the last 21k were swirling in my mind. I saw Sybille's parents here, but their encouragement didn't reach me. However, I was starting to come around a bit and I thought of Gordo's "It's okay to walk, you just have to make sure the run restarts each time.". So after the bridge I decided to run a bit more, at least up to the next aid station. I had already sipped coke having run through most of the aid station so far, and I decided to try to take in whatever I could from the next aid station. Nearly stopped running before I had gotten there, but just caught myself in time. I walked the next aid station, drank a full cup of coke, nibbled on a cookie, poured tons of water over my head. After I was finished with the coke, I started running again. Well, it was more like a shuffle, but at least I didn't walk. So on to the next aid station … I just tried to think of the next aid station and not further ahead, and it worked. Slowly, I started to feel … well, not better, but at least not worse. At the turnaround I noticed Sybille was just 2:30 mins ahead and I thought I might just be able to catch her.

Time: 1:37:15 (285^th in my AG – when I saw the results after the race, this really surprised me. A lot of people must have been feeling a lot worse than I was!)

Third loop (28k to finish)

Tried to run from aid station to station, walked while trying to get as much coke down as possible, walked the two uphill sections before the bridge – but ran the rest of the last loop … at about a 7 min pace …

Still I caught Sybille at about the 34k mark, and we ran a bit together. She had to walk before the next aid station, so I ran on. The rest of the loop was a blur … tried not to think too far ahead, but when I got my last band (to show I had run three loops) at the 37k mark I thought I'd be able to get to the finish line like this. Saw a lot of my fans at this point and their cheering spurred me on. I was close to tears when I got to the finish line and a bit unhappy I couldn't see my wife right before I crossed the line. (She saw me finish, though.) The finish line itself was great – big stands in the oldest part of Frankfurt, lots of people cheering.

Sven was at the finish line waiting for Sybille and we both gave each other a big hug. Then "my fans" were there as well – my wife, my father, the rest of my family. After the first round of congratulations Sybille came in, too, for the next round of cheering and hugging. Everyone of our club had finished, and finished well.

Time: 1:39:14 (as this loop added the 200m to the finish line, the time is almost equal to my 2^nd loop; 237^th in my AG), total time for the run 4:42:12 (278^th in my AG), total time 12:26.57 (334^th in my AG).

Race Report Ratzeburg 2004

2009-08-03T20:00:00.000+02:00

Note: This race was in the age before we had a digital camera (hard to believe, but it’s true!). So no pictures in this report …

Distance

In Germany, Half IMs are called "Middle Distance" triathlons, typically with distances of 2k Swim, 80k Bike and 20k Run. These basic distances are usually altered a bit based on local preferences. In Ratzeburg, a small town near Hamburg, Germany, the bike leg was officially 85k in a rolling countryside, although my reconnaissance showed a length of about 88k (two loops of 44k each). The run was exactly 20k (again 2 two loops of 10k).

Before the race

Ratzeburg was to be my first Half IM after a 12 year break. In my student days (early 1990s) I was able to finish 3 Half IMs, all of which were not all that good, especially on the run. My best run time was 2:04h.

This year, after having gained 25kg of weight (and having lost 18 kg of these) since then, my goals were like this: First, finish, and second, keep it together on the run. Thinking of trying an IM race next year, my strategy for the race was similar to Gordo's IM strategy: Easy on the swim and bike to be able to put together a strong run.

The run leg was always (and still is ;-) my weak leg, being a half-way decent swimmer, I'm usually able to more or less hold my place during the bike leg, only to be overtaken by a bunch of people on the run. Having had a look at the rolling run-course instilled even more respect for the run leg, so I decided to be really careful on the bike not to go too hard.

As I've also ridden the bike course a bit, I had a pretty good feel for my potential times:

Base 0:37 – 0:03 – 2:53 (30,5 km/h) – 0:02 – 1:50 -> 5:25h

Realistic 0:35 – 0:03 – 2:49 (31,2 km/h) – 0:02 – 1:45 -> 5:14h

Dream goal 0:33 – 0:03 – 2:46 (31,8 km/h) – 0:02 – 1:40 -> 5:04h

The morning

As the start was to be at 8am, that meant getting up at 4:30. Some breakfast (an apple, a banana, two honey sandwiches), prepare two more honey sandwiches for the race, fill the bike bottles and my fuel belt for the run. Then drive 45 mins to Ratzeburg and set up my bike in the transition. A light jog, find a toilet and some more jogging. 20 mins before the start I took a lot of time to properly put my wetsuit on. 10 mins before my start, some light swimming (just to get wet). Then a last kiss from my wife before the race. Some good wishes from my parents, who had come out by now as well. Ready to go!

Swim

As there were about 100 people in my wave, it wasn't crowded for very long before I could swim my own pace. Also found a pretty good pair of feet. At the turn around, I had a quick look at my watch – 17 mins! On the way back, I tried to draft a bit more, but whenever I found some feet, the guy attached to them started to zig-zag, and I swam a lot of the second half on my own. As I could see that there was a pretty big gap to the next group, I held myself a bit back to stay in the group I was in. It felt quite long to get back, but when I got out of the water, my time was 33:21. Yo! Cheers from my fan group.

T1

Struggled a bit to get out of my wetsuit, but when I tugged the cord hard, it opened up. Found my bike (had a 2 second scare when I thought I had the wrong row), took the wetsuit, cap and goggles off, sunglasses and helmet on, unrack the bike and out of T1.

Bike

Coming out of T1 and trying to mount my bike on the fly, I nearly ran over a couple of guys who had stopped completely. After running around them, I hopped on my bike and started to pedal over the first hill. Saw my wife who had run up to the bike course waving at me. Then I slipped into my bike shoes (had them already attached to the bike). There was a short (100m) section of cobblestones. A couple of people had already wreaked their nutrition here, with bike bottles, energy bars, CO2 cartridges etc. being strewn all over the place. My sandwich bag which I had taped to my aero bars, nearly came off as well, but before it fell down I put a hand on it, and after I had passed the cobblestones, I quickly stuffed it into my shirt's pockets. Then there was a flat section that allowed me to put on my arm warmers and drink a bit before hitting the first "hill". (It wasn't long – maybe a km, and not that steep, but there aren't many long hills around where I live.) My goal was to wait for my HR to settle down to about 130, and I was already resigned to the fact that there would be a couple of people who would overtake me here. It turned out to be a lot of people, and my HR was still hovering just under 150. So I pedaled easy, even after the hill was over, and after about 15 mins my HR was in the 130s. I still had to take it easy for another 15 mins or my HR would shoot up.

After 20k I had finished my first water bottle (500ml), and I got a replacement at the aid zone. The bike course is a two loop affair, and at the end of the first loop I was able to hold my HR in the planned region (around 130) while my speed – at about 31.5 km/h - was towards my dream goal speed. I was eating and drinking according to plan. Before starting the second loop I had to stop and pee. At the start of the second loop my wife handed me my private special needs bag. (Is it legal to accept food and drink from friends and family? I didn't really care today, but I sure don't want to loose a Kona slot because of that.) So all in all I ate on the bike two powerbars (2*225 = 450 cal), two honey sandwiches (2*150 = 300 cal), and I drank about 1200 ml Gatorade (12*25 = 300cal), about 1000 cal. That was lower target rate. I had planned to secure 2 bananas at the aid stations (2*100 = 200cal), however, I got none. Good thing I had planned for some buffer in my nutrition plan!

On the second loop I increased my HR to about 135 (RPE staid the same), and things were going pretty well. Only bad thing was that I had to stop two more times to pee, so I was re-overtaking the people I had passed before my stop. Seems I have to learn to pee on the bike!

Towards the end I was happy that the ride was about to be over (Note: Should use a real bike short for IM.) Shortly before going down the hill I have described earlier (about 15min before T2), I took in a gel (another 125 cal) with my remaining water. Then the cobblestone section (with cheers from my fan club who placed strategically at this slow section) , the last short hill, out of the shoes and dismount the bike.

T2

Ran with my bike to the rack (no problem in finding the right spot this time). Rack the bike, took off the helmet and my glasses. Took some care to get the grass off my feet, put on my socks and shoes, refresh a bit with a wet towel (feels great in the neck and on the legs after a bike ride!), then grab my bottle belt and go!

Official time at the end of T2: xx

I didn't have a feeling at all whether I had gained or lost any places, but from the official results I was able to see that my swim had put me on 26^th place in my AG (out of 52), my bike was the 35^th best (having slipped to 35^th place). My legs felt okay, so I was anxious to find out if my training had paid off.

Run

I didn't feel too good at the start of the run, but after 2k I started to pick off runners at ease, and my speed was almost at dream goal speed (5 min per k). The HR was a bit high (goal was 140 to 150, especially on the uphills I was at around 155). Based on my spring marathon, I decided to stick to this HR and see how long I can hold it. At the aid stations I was taking a sip of water and put the rest on my head. It was starting to get warm! At the 5k mark, my km-splits were right were I wanted them and I got a big boost out constantly of passing people. At the 8k mark, I took one gel with water and immediately regretted it – as I got pretty heavy side stitches. I tried to think positive thoughts (from Gordo's tips for your first HIM: "There will be a period where you'll feel absolutely awful, but it'll pass."), and still continued to overtake people! I was already feeling a bit better when a mountain bike with the overall leaded passed me. I had figured out beforehand that this would probably happen on my first loop, so I was quite happy that it was pretty late (after the 9k mark). Also, the guy was huffing pretty hard, yet I didn't feel that he was going that fast, which gave me another boost. With these thoughts I had already reached the end of the first loop. My wife and my parents cheered my on. I passed my bottle belt to my wife – I decided I wouldn’t take another gel. Then there were some people from my team who told me how good I looked. (Gave them my usual reply to that: I look better than I feel.) One guy ran a bit with me and asked whether I had already committed to do next year's German IM with him. Hit the split button at the 10k mark (just a bit over 50 mins – right on track for my dream goal!)

On the second run loop there were a lot of people from the OD race that took place at the same time, so again I had a lot of people I was able to overtake. Some more cheers from other athletes from my club, and my splits were right were I wanted them. At about 13k I started to try to pick it up some more, and my split came down to about 4:40. At the aid station shortly before the 15k mark I took a cup of Coke and walked a bit to drink it fully. Hurt my split a bit, but I really picked it up after that. I tried to go as hard as I could and managed to go the last 5k in 23:05. At the finish line friends and family welcomed me after 5:03:51 (29^th in my AG, 85^th of 177 overall – it doesn't get more MOP than this!), being totally elated after that great run (run split 1:37:55, 15^th in my AG).

Key Lessons

pacing strategy works – had a great run which is very unusual for me
scout the course – you know where things are and you can segment the course
do a couple of race sims to give you a feeling of how hard to go on race day
no tempo runs really required for a "just finish" strategy – a couple of B races is sufficient for that
consistent training pays off

Summer reading: Some old reports

2009-08-02T20:00:00.000+02:00

My wife and I will be gone on our Summer vacation for a while. As there probably won’t be too much personal training and endurance news during that time, I’ve decided to take a different track:

Over the years I’ve posted some race reports in a couple of forums, namely the no-longer-existent forum on Gordo’s old website and on the still existing, but pretty low traffic forum at CounterpartCoaching. I’ve added some photos where I still had some. Even if some of the content is a little bit dated and some plans turned out to be a bit unrealistic, it was interesting for me to go back to these old reports and re-read them. I hope you’ll enjoy them as well!

Your day is always better after running, biking or swimming

2009-07-27T21:21:00.001+02:00

This weekend I was again reminded of the main reason I’m doing this “endurance stuff”: It makes me feel better afterwards.

The week was pretty stressful, lots of work, couple of things to do at home, my server crashing all the time, etc. etc. – the usual things that happen in life, only a bit more condensed than usual. With all of this and with me currently in my “off-season”, all I managed to get in during the week was one little run. By Friday, I was totally miserable and stressed out. Headaches, a little cold, short temper – I was in a really bad mood.

On Sunday, I got to sleep in, have a nice breakfast, then went for a great two hour bike ride. Nice weather, fresh air, some music on my iPod (and a couple of nice podcasts) .. totally changed my outlook. By the time I got back home, I was a new person. I was nicely exhausted after doing some uphill sprints on my bike. My head was clear, and after a shower and a nice pasta meal, I was ready to tackle some of the todo items that lingered during the week and got quite a lot done.

So, again, it showed me that in its most basic form, getting out for a run or bike session is mainly for myself – I just feel better afterwards and I’m more productive. Also, I’m a much nicer person when I’m working out on a regular basis. I sometimes get caught up in “getting ready for a race” which for me, it’s just a great way to get me motivated to get out of the door.

Let’s see how much I manage to do that in the next week …

Running a Marathon in your training

2009-07-20T20:00:00.000+02:00

Note: I’ve written a post on Mitch’s forum over at CounterpartCoaching at the end of April. Most of my thoughts are still valid after my main race, so I thought I’d share my original post here.

Before Mitch & Scott freak out, let me add to the title: … in your training for an Ultra Marathon.

I’m training for my first Ultra Marathon this year, the 73k trail Ultra “Rennsteiglauf” in Germany (only three weeks to go! ). I’ve always been intrigued by Ultra Marathoners running really long runs in their training. So I’ve included two Marathons in my training plan, and while this certainly not something for everyone, I want to share my experiences and am quite interested in other people’s thoughts.

Here’s the benefits I’m hoping for:

big training day
Running a marathon is a pretty long training run.. more is better ;-)
it trains a “different” kind of endurance
I’ve read somewhere that something strange seems to happen after a certain number of hours, namely at 3 hours, 7 hours, 10 hours. (Not sure where – Mark Allen?) What I mean by that is that a “different” kind of endurance is required to go for 2 hours than for, say, 5 hours. In order to train for that, you should be doing sessions longer than 3 hours. (Just think of the first few “longer” bike rides in a season.) As I plan to go about 8 hours in my Ultra, I wanted to cross the 3 hour “threshold” a few times. A marathon allows me to do that in a safe environment.
confidence
Completing a marathon is a great confidence builder, especially if you manage to complete it in a decent fashion.

The first marathon I did this year was the “Winter Marathon” in Husum, Germany at the end of February. I managed to go at a 6Min/k pace without having to go real hard. The other one was the Hamburg Marathon last weekend, where it was a bit hotter and harder but I still managed to go sub 4 hours. I haven’t quite recovered yet and my A-race is still out, but here’s what I learned so far.

The main point I’m taking away is that these Marathons are still training runs and should be treated as such. So all the usual “long run rules” still apply:

Adjust your pace accordingly.
The main goal is to finish the race, so it’s not about time goals. My marathon PR pace is 5 Min/k, so I was shooting for a 6 Min/k pace in Husum. After that went well, I was trying for a sub 4h pace in Hamburg (5:40 Min/k). This is just a touch slower than my “normal” long run pace.
This is more difficult than it sounds, as there will be a ton of people racing for much faster times than you. It is even more difficult if you’re in a big race that seeds runners according to their PRs.
Take your time at the aid stations.
Make sure you get all the hydration and nutrition you need at the aid stations. No need to shove people out of the way to get a cup of water or to try to drink and eat while running.
Don’t be afraid to walk a bit.
As you’re not in it for any (important) time goals, don’t be afraid to walk to catch your breath or relax at the harder uphill sections. I didn’t follow any fixed schedule, but just walked when I felt like it.
Lug around all the equipment you might need for your A-race.
As I plan to run with a Camelbak at my Ultra, I was running with a Camelbak, an MP3 player, extra clothes and food at the marathons. I wouldn’t do that if I was going for a time goal, but again it is similar to what I would do for a long training run.
Enjoy the race.
Took some time to take pictures and enjoy the atmosphere. Also took a couple of pictures with my cell phone camera and was texting my wife and friends who came to watch with updates and split times.

Of course, the big concern about running a Marathon in your training is the time lost before and after the race. By not tapering much, you can limit the time lost before the race. These marathons were a good chance to race ala “Taper Interrupted”. For Hamburg I did a 20k run on Thursday and a faster 10k run on Saturday before the Sunday race. (For Husum I was taking things easy the days before as I was a bit worried about finishing and had just completed by biggest running week ever.)

Afterwards, you have to focus on recovering hard. Recovery comes quicker if you have a large running base. For me, this meant to focus on running (to the detriment of swimming and biking), and I’ve had 4 of my largest running weeks ever in January and February (100k+ weeks for me). With all the running volume in my legs, I feel I can recover in about a week to get back into training.

Here’s what I did specifically to recover quickly after Husum at the end of February:

Follow the race with a really easy week.
For me, this was three days off in the week after the race. The two runs I did were short (30 Min) and easy. My legs weren’t a problem, but I didn’t feel fresh and didn’t have any “zip”. The weekend after the race I took a really easy 16k run with lots of walking breaks – managed to complete it but I was still tired, so I probably should have waited a bit longer.
Take some extra sleep.
I tried to easy my workload as much as possible and managed to get an extra hour of sleep for a couple of days.
Prepare some other things to keep you busy.
If you’ve got a basic week that works, it’s really hard not to do certain training runs. For example I do a faster 16k training run on Tuesdays. After the marathons I set up other things to do instead of the session – after Husum I set up my training blog, after Hamburg I set up my bike for the summer season. If I didn’t have these other things on my mind I would have done the running session even if it was way too early to do that.

So far, I’m quite confident to recover in time for my big race on the Rennsteig in 17 days …

P.S. Looking back, I think the two marathons in my prep really helped me get ready for my Ultra. Would I do it again? For an Ultra, certainly! Not so sure about doing it in my prep for next year’s Ironman. What are your thoughts and experiences?

Reinfeld Swim and Run: Totally Shelled!

2009-07-13T20:29:00.001+02:00

This weekend, I was doing a fun little event here in my local town: a swim and run. This started as a relay (with four runners and two swimmers), and also added an individual event a few years ago. The distances are pretty short (about 300m swim and a 3k run), so you can actually take part in the individual event and in a relay.

On the picture you can see the beach where the start is. The swim is across the lake to the right, and the run goes along the perimeter of the lake to the tip you can barely see in the background and back to the little beach house.

It is a “different” event for me, especially this year when I was just doing longer events. In fact, the “shortest” race I had done this year was a 19k run in January … It turned out that the high intensity still hurts pretty much.

The swim was okay (considering I had barely swum at all this year), the transition was okay as well. But as soon as I started the run I was light headed and had to concentrate really hard. I was puffing really hard, but at least no one was overtaking me. (The people in front of me were better runners than me anyway.) I had to put in a little extra surge towards the end to hold my place and that really killed me. It took me about 15 minutes to start breathing normal again, and the pain took a while to go away. Then my legs went rock-hard (but luckily no cramping) and I was really exhausted.

It was a good thing we had about an hour before our relay, so I had some time to recover (and eat some food). Some easy jogging, some stretching, and I was hoping I wouldn’t have to run really hard for my 900m in the relay. Good thing that our first runner already had a sizable gap, so I could pretty much cruise my leg of the relay. I don’t think I would have been able to run head-to-head with another guy. We actually won our wave, and strangely we also managed to have the best time of the day. (Must have been the others that did it.)

Totally shelled afterwards. Hadn’t eaten all too well during the day, and I was really ravenous afterwards. Then I overate in the evening and wasn’t feeling to well during the night. I’m so not used to any faster stuff ... good thing I don’t have any races lined up so I can properly recover!

The weird thing .. I still enjoyed the event very much! We had so much fun with all the people from our club. I probably have to do some more speedy stuff next year so I’m not going to be quite as grumpy after the race.

Nice relaxing weekend

2009-07-08T21:51:00.001+02:00

Just came back from a long weekend in Denmark. My parents have been spending their vacation there for years, and this year was no different. They rent a beach house (sounds more impressive than it actually is), and family gets a chance to visit them over the weekend. All it takes is a three to four hour drive ..

We had a chance to spend an extra day on Monday, and we spent the weekend with my wife, my parents and my cousin’s family. We had great weather, got a ton of sun (including a sunburn) and went swimming a couple of times in the ocean.

I also managed to get two runs in. (Sorry – no pictures.) The first one was an hour with my cousin. He usually starts a bit faster than me, but doesn’t have that much endurance. So when we starting running through the dunes and on the beach after 20 minutes, he suffered a little bit (but didn’t complain).

I also enjoyed my second run which was a solo run on Monday. My wife and my parents went shopping in the next town, and afterwards I ran home with most of the route directly on the beach.

(View of the beach from the light house at Blavand)

Running in the sand is different and quite a bit more exhausting, so I took things easy. It was getting hot and I was quite spent after the 75 minutes that the run took. Looking back, this was the longest run since mid-May when I ran Rennsteig ….

Next weekend, I’ve got a little local swim and run, so I guess I’ll have to get a swim session or two in .. haven’t done any swimming since last October!

One thing I was discussing with Mitch was that I need to move back to a balanced triathlon training after my vacation in August. This year I was in “single sport mode”, and that won’t be good enough getting ready for IM Germany. But for now, I’m just trying to enjoy the fitness I have and get some nice and cool stuff in. It works so far!

Major Race for 2010: IM Germany

2009-07-02T23:23:00.001+02:00

Yesterday (Wednesday), registration for IM Germany opened for a few spots. Last year, almost all (?) spots went away the day after the race at on-site registration. So this year, they were giving away 1.000 spots before the race. I assume that the rest of the spots will be handed out on-site and that there won’t be another chance for a registration through the web.

So I was anxious to get a slot on Wednesday. I even planned to take the morning off but that didn’t work out because of a meeting I had to go to at work from 9 to 10am. Luckily, registration opened at 10am .. but when I tried to access the registration site from work, I got error messages. They didn’t look like it was a problem with any site blocking, but as it still didn’t work after half an hour, I snuck out to the coffee shop to try their local wifi. Same result, so I needed to be a bit more patient.

After 90 minutes of building panic and retrying every few minutes, I managed to get to the registration page. Filled out the required info, gave them my credit card info and boom … I was in!

Seems I made it just in time, on their website they said they filled the 1.000 spots within 2 hours. So my main goal for next year is on the calendar now: IM Germany on July 4th, 2010.

An Easy Week

2009-06-28T20:00:00.000+02:00

Writing last week’s post helped make up my mind about my summer plans. I’ve done some training when I had time, so I went on three easy runs on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. After each of them, I realized how relaxing and refreshing a nice run is .. after a run you almost always feel better than before!

Trying to get things lined up for next year. I’ve got a phone call set up with Mitch Gold from CounterpartCoaching. I hope he’ll be able to help me with my plans for next year.

Mitch has just secured a Hawaii slot in the recent Ironman in Cour d’Arlene. He said it was a tough race and he didn’t look too happy:

I’ll continue with easy training next week; lots of work to do, so not too much time. I’m looking forward to next weekend, we’ll drive up to Denmark to visit my parents who are on holiday in a rented summer house. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get in a nice run on the beach. If the weather is nice, I’ll shoot some pictures.

Another week after that, I’ll do a local, very small swim and run. Guess I’ll have to do some swimming before that …

Planning for the summer

2009-06-22T20:00:00.000+02:00

Currently, things feel a little bit weird.

My big a-race is over (Rennsteig), my “fun event” is also done and dusted (Vättern). There is nothing else on my schedule for the summer (other than vacation in August). Always a bit dangerous!

There’s a couple of little frustrating things. My ergomo seems to be broken again. Quite some money spent on it (at least I got four years of use from it), and I’ve gotten quite used to the data. Then I want to line up some coaching support for next year, and that takes longer than I was hoping for. Plus my wife and I are trying to loose some weight (“point-counting” with a weight watchers type of program), and that takes some energy as well.

So last week, I haven’t been doing much training. One thing was that I had a lot to do at work. On my usual “20% Friday” there were meetings to attend, so I was doing a lot of little things over the weekend that I usually manage to get out of the way on Friday. I still had enough time to meet with friends, to do stuff with my wife, but I just couldn’t relax. I really have to make a decision about what to do during the next few weeks – do I put another race on my schedule or do I “take the time off”?

Any possible races I was thinking about don’t look too good. A nice local race was already full, so I planned a long weekend with my wife instead. Then there is the Hamburg Triathlon at the end of July, but that’s already full. I might be able to get a spot on eBay, but right now I can’t be bothered.

For now, I feel more like taking the time off. It’s a bit weird to think about a break at this time of the year, but I think that I’ll better focus on work and personal stuff for the next weeks. Then I have a month off (vacation with my wife!), then it’s slowly getting ready for next year. I’ll probably do another IM next year, so I want to be fresh for all the training that needs to be done. And I’ve already done a lot this year!

So I guess it’s okay to take things a little easy. Any thoughts on your side? Let me know in the comments what you think. Thanks.

RaceReport Vättern

2009-06-18T20:11:00.001+02:00

I had done the Vättern-Rundan, a 300k bike “tour” in Sweden, twice before. It is a very large event with about 18.000 participants. Any decent Swede has to complete this race (and a few other events like the famous skiing event Vasa loppet) at least once in his or her lifetime. So you see a lot of people that do not use a race bike but rather a “regular” touring bike, even some mountain bikes. All of this is to say that the focus of this event is on “completion”. Times are taken, but more of a way to make sure that people complete the race and are not left on the course rather than a results list with a specific ranking. This leads to a quite relaxed atmosphere – almost everyone takes their time at the well stocked aid stations to eat and drink.

The way they start this race is quite unique. The first group starts at Friday night 8pm, and then every two minutes another group of 60 people or so is sent on its way. The last group leaves at 6am Saturday morning. The finish line is open until midnight Saturday night. This leaves almost everyone a long time to finish the race.

Before the race

This year, there was a group of six people from my local club going to the race. We left early Friday morning for the 8 hour trip to Motala, Sweden where the race starts and ends. We were going through some pretty bad weather with lots of rain and wind, but when we got to the Vättern lake, it had at least stopped raining.

For those that do the race for the first time, the first time you see the lake the size of what you are about to do hits you. You arrive in Jonköping at the southern tip of the lake and you can see a bit of the eastern and western “coast”, but definitely not the northern end. Then you drive another hour (in the car, mostly on the freeway) to get to Motala .. and you still haven’t reached the northern tip! And you know that the next day there is a bit of work in front of you!

Once we got to Motala, we took our space on one of the campsites that are set up for the event. Basically, every little area of lawn is taken over by campers, with official sites at least getting a couple of porta-pottis. The area we had was nice and not very crowded, it looked like some people decided not to do the race because of the “nice” weather.

We collected our “Nummerlappar” (race numbers), prepared our bikes and had our dinner (pasta cooked on camping cookers).

The we managed to catch two to three hours of sleep before having to get up again.

Getting up, going to the toilet, having a cup of coffee, a little bit to eat .. not much time to do the things in order to get ready to start. It got a bit hectic, but we managed to get down to the start area just in time before our 1.58 start. It wasn’t raining, but all of had put on all clothes we had, including long finger gloves and booties.

The first 100k: Getting wet, cold and miserable

The first hour in the dark is always fascinating. Red lights in front of you as far as you can see, and the same thing in the back with white lights. It was cold, but quite bearable with all the clothes. When we hit the first aid station, it was slowly getting less dark, but no sun you could discern.

Soon after that, it started to rain. Soon after that it started to pour down. Soon after that my clothes were soaked, my feet were wet and I started to get cold. The rain continued and I was getting colder and colder. By the time we got to the second aid station, I had tried to warm up on the uphills by going a bit harder – but I still started shaking.

On the downhill after the aid station, I was shaking really hard. The rain continued and the uphills were not long enough to add some warmth. By the time we hit the first long stop in Jonköping, I was seriously in doubt how long I could continue in this fashion.

The second 100k: Feeling better

Luckily, eating some mashed potatoes and sausages helped a bit. Then I got the real “life saver”: Volker (who was part of our group) had an extra, extra large rain jacket that he could lend to me. It was like a sail, but at least I wasn’t getting any more wet and the wind wasn’t going directly through my clothes any more. Also, there was a long uphill and I started to feel a bit better.

By aid station #4 (~135k) all doubts of finishing had disappeared and I was back to okay. Too bad that my Ergomo had enough of the rain and started to misbehave - a few k’s later IT froze completely. (Luckily, after drying the unit when I got home, everything is working again). This way, I don’t have reliable power and speed data after 100k. Until then, I was going at an average speed of 29k/h, and I estimate that I didn’t get much slower after that.

The next aid station in Hjo was another long break with a meal (lasagna, salad, milk etc.).

By now the rain had stopped completely and even though we still had some grey clouds, for the rest of the course the streets even dried up. After the big meal (went for an extra portion of lasagna!) I started to get really tired. Another “life saver”: Coming towards aid station #6 I stopped at a gas station and bought a Coke. After that, I was okay for the rest of the race.

The last 100k: Making it

Not much happened for the last 100k. At this point in the “long races”, if you’re not in big trouble and/or trying to go as fast as possible, everything is just one long drag. You try to play some games to entertain yourself (how much longer to the next aid station, to the finish etc.) and I stopped quite often to pee. I also tried to shoot a couple of pictures in mid-race.

I took another nice long break at the last aid station, hammered a bit until I reached one of the other guys (who had not stopped) and pretty leisurely went with Enno to the finish line.

All six of us had finished the race, and we pretty much got to the finish line within a few minutes. Those that were a bit stronger than others took some extra time at the aid stations, so we all went through the course more or less together. Nobody was totally shelled or out of it, so we walked a bit to get some food – of course the sun had come out by now.

All in all, a very nice weekend.

QuickNews: Vättern

2009-06-16T07:45:00.000+02:00

Made it safely back home after the trip to Sweden.

The trip was really nice and I enjoyed the three days of it. All six of us completed Vätternrundan without too many problems. It was raining quite hard for the first few hours and I was quite miserable and cold. Luckily, the shaking stopped once one of my friends gave me an extra jacket he was carrying with him. After that, I didn’t have any problems.

We all took the ride really relaxed, stopped at every aid station and ate and drank a lot. All in all, it took us 15 hours to complete the 300k ride, but at least four hours of it was spent in the aid stations. May ergomo took some water and stopped working after 160k (with some strange behavior until then), so I can only guess my average – probably between 28.5 and 29 km/h.

More details and pictures in the next days.

Improving your bike LT by 5% in 2 weeks

2009-06-09T23:15:00.001+02:00

As probably my last session before Vättern, I did anothor bike LT test as per Coggan:

Warm up with 3* 1 Minute high cadence
5 Min “As Hard as you can” – I have a nice long uphill for that, then recover a bit by going easy
LT Test is 20 Min “Best effort” (mostly flat, with some short “power uphills”)

Your LT wattage is the Average Watts – 5% (because LT is usually measured/defined as “as hard as you can go for an hour”).

After recovering from Rennsteig, I did my first LT test on May 23rd:

255 Average Power (257 Normalized Power, so I was quite even in my effort)
HR average at 148 beats
covered 12km with an average speed of 36 km/h

Yesterday (June 8th), I did another one:

269 AP (273NP)
142 HR (HR probably a bit depressed after a long ride the day before)
12,83km, average of 38,5 km/h (mostly a factor of the wind blowing in the proper direction)

Summing up, I improved my LT from 242w to 255w – an improvement of over 5% in just two weeks.

Here’s the training I did in those two weeks:

2 longer rides (125k and 88k)
3 medium long rides at ~2 hours
5 recovery rides (“spin” for an hour)
2 interval sessions (with 4-5 minutes of intensity)

Basically, I rode a lot (at least for my standard) and also added some intensity. I also made sure that on my longer rides I tried to ride to a “steady” pace (instead of my usual “just ride” pace"). This seemed to do the trick for me.

But still, even with “smart” training 5% improvement is a lot and probably not repeatable (even within a longer block of say 4-8 weeks). I guess most of the improvement is due to the fact that I was starting quite low (having almost only been running this year), and the numbers are still a bit lower than what I was seeing last year (LT at 260w – but still quite close!). It seems to show that a lot of the “base endurance” can be transferred over from running to cycling, and that a relatively small amount of riding (total bike volume this year is at 830km) allows me to get to a decent level.

So I think I’ll be okay for Vättern, but that there is still a big unknown .. 300k is a bit different than my longest ride this year of 125k.

But once again, I’m confident and looking forward to it! That’s a good sign and all can ask for this close after Rennsteig. Hopefully the weather will be dry – weather report looks a bit shaky.

Looking back on Rennsteig

2009-06-08T19:12:00.001+02:00

My big A-race for this season is now three weeks in the past. Time to look back and reflect a bit on the race. What I liked, what went well and areas I need to improve for next year …

First off – so I don’t forgot it – I really enjoyed the training and the race. I was training at record levels for the run (and Zeroes both for the swim and the bike). My season starts in October, and until End of May I had run 1842km, my previous “best” was 1472km. Even so I had enough time for work and home stuff. This was a nice change from the Ironman training with all the swims (always +1h for getting to and from the pool and the “little things”) and long bikes (long session = at least 4 hours).

The race organization was great as well. Race package pickup, dropping off the finish-bags, starting area (with lots of porta-potties) – was well done. The aid stations were placed at decent intervals and extremely well stocked and organized – not too many races I have seen that spotted menus at the aid stations and really large signs pointing you to the right tables. You could also tell that most volunteers have done this a couple of times in the past, in fact you could tell that it was a kind of tradition for them and they were really proud of what they were doing (and rightly so!). The finish-area was big enough to handle all the people (during the day there must have been between 15.000 and 20.000 finishers with all the races they were offering), but still small enough so you don’t have to do much scurrying around to get all your stuff. I can’t think of one thing that they could improve.

I’m happy with my race performance, too. Even though I was an hour slower than I had planned, most of this was due to the hills that were much steeper than I had anticipated. They were taking a lot longer than I had thought. Even will all that, I didn’t run into any major problems during the race, and I even had that almost magical 45 minutes or so towards the end when I was almost “flying”. I’m sure I could have run a bit faster (and I may try to at a later time), but as this was my first try at an Ultra marathon, I didn’t want to run for time. I’m not sure how much faster I could have run this year (15 minutes? 30 minutes?), but certainly not close to the 8 hours I had planned.

So – while my endurance was good – I’m still thinking about “how to get faster” in the future. I don’t have any immediate, specific goals, but at some time in my life I’d like to run a Boston qualifier time or get close to run a marathon in 3 hours. For that, I think there are a few changes I have to make in my training. This year my focus was on going the duration and in order to do so I was working with an upper HR bound (~130 beats). With that, I think I was going a bit “easy” at times (HR around 110, with averages typically under 120). So what I would like to establish for next year is a lower bound as well – I’m thinking of 115. I’ve been trying that in the last few weeks and it already feels a lot “faster”. I’m experimenting with a similar concept for cycling as well, but here I’m shooting for a steady wattage of around 150 watts even on my long rides.

This year I added a faster run into my program (the 8*4 iPod interval session described in an earlier post) and that worked well. I’ll continue that but will also add some other session like that.

One big issue that I’ve been working on for years is my weight. For the last two years I have not been paying much attention or energy on losing weight. So, at 87kg, I was again a bit overweight for my race. I’m not sure what impact that had, but I feel that if I want to get significantly faster than I am right now, I will have to loose some weight. For next year’s race I’m shooting for a much lower weight than I had this year – 84kg or under. Somehow, this has been “on the list”, but I just didn’t manage much on this front. I know it’s holding me back, but for now I just didn’t have the energy. Hopefully, next year I’ll be better. Hmmm ….

All the race prep leading up to the race has been fine. I think over the the years I have built a taper, pre-race meals etc. that is just working fine. Even the big morning meal has not been causing any problems for me. During the race, I have found that I don’t need much food. With the stuff offered at the aid stations, I didn’t need many bars, gels etc. I was nibbling a bit on a Clif bar, but didn’t even finish a whole one. Carrying the Camelbak didn’t cause any problems, and it was nice to always be able to sip some water and to have some storage space for clothes. But in a different race, that will be “too much”, a FuelBelt should be enough.

This leaves me with some ides for races in 2010. After a break this year, I would like to do another Ironman. A friend of mine will probably do her first IM, and it would be nice to go through this experience with her. In my past Ironmen, I have yet manage to put a solid run together. This will be a goal for next year, and I hope that all this year’s running will be beneficial to an Ironman run next year. But I will have to go back to “Ironman mode” again .. lots of swimming and cycling in addition to running. I’m still thinking of how to set up my season plan .. but I have a while to go.

For the rest of this season, I’m not sure what else I will do (and I will not do too much planning and play it by feel). Next week, I’ll be in Sweden for Vaetternrundan, and maybe I’ll do the Hamburg triathlon at the end of July. In August, my wife and I will go on vacation, and I guess after that I will start to prep for the 2010 season. I’m looking for someone to help me with the planning and fine tuning for the Ironman, and I hope to line up some support soon. I’ll keep you posted …

Long bike ride

2009-05-31T22:19:00.001+02:00

After Rennsteig, I’ve got to do some crash training in order to get ready for Vätternrundan.

My running has been greatly reduced, basically I’m only going for a run when I don’t have enough time – riding less than an hour doesn’t make much sense. I’ve gotten a few runs in since Rennsteig and my legs are okay, but I don’t really feel like doing much running.

With Vättern only two more weeks away, riding bike is much more exciting. I’ve managed to ride quite a lot (for my standards at least) – this week I did four rides totaling 260k. (Any week over 200k is a “big” cycling week for me.)

Today, I’ve had enough time to do one of my favorite routes. The base route is about 125k and can be lengthened, but it goes through mostly quiet back roads and has some great views.

After I leave from my home, there is some “climbing” and then a great view towards the old city center of Lübeck with its towers. My cell phone does not really do any justice to the view:

After that there are some downhills and after 1h30 of riding I get to Travemünde where the river Trave flows into the Baltic Sea. If you’ve read Thomas Mann’s “Buddenbrocks”, you’ve probably heard of this seaside resort. A port with a bunch of small and large ships, some nice old buildings, but also some (not so nice) new buildings:

I then take a ferry across the Trave and after a bit more riding I cross what used to be the border between East and West Germany:

It looks pretty unspectacular now, but twenty years ago there was the inner-German version of the “Berlin Wall” with fences, mines, dogs and a bunch of border troops ready to shoot at you, probably even some spring guns. I still get goose bumps when I just ride across the old death strip.

Now in “East Germany”, there is a nice mixture of old roads and some newly built ones with lots of rolling hills. With the help of a good map I figured out some nice back roads that are practically devoid of traffic. (And most of the bad cobblestone sections gone by now.) After a while there is a nice view over wheat fields back towards Travemünde:

(Again, pretty tricky to see anything here on my cell phone picture, but the white blob in the middle of the picture is the high-rise you can see on the Travemünde picture.)

As you can see from the picture, I had great weather and a lot of sunshine today, no problem riding short/short. After about 3 hours total riding time and a lot more hills, you get a bit more inland towards the tip of the “Ratzeburger See”:

A long, fast downhill down to the lake, then a pretty steep uphill and you get to view everything from the other side of the lake:

From here it is another hour home, so I ended up going for 4 1/2 hours at a pretty good pace. This was the longest ride I have done since my Ironman last August, and I felt pretty good. Apart from getting a bit hot, I didn’t run into any issues. I still have another full week to train (plus the taper week), and I should be okay for Vättern. Let’s see how I feel tomorrow …

Next official "race": Vättern-Rundan

2009-05-23T22:25:00.003+02:00

Made some plans with my wife tonight and talked with her about my next race.

So: Next on my schedule is Vättern-Rundan on June 13th. It is a 300k bike event in Sweden around the largest lake in Sweden, Vättern:

It's not really a race per se (although a few people really race it), but more something "to finish". In order to be a "proper Swede", you have to finish this (and a couple of other events like the famous ski event Vasa-loppet) at least once in your lifetime.

There really is not enough time to properly prepare for it, but a large group of people from my club are going up there, and it'll be a good chance to enjoy this events with some friends and have a good time. It won't be a "goal" race with a certain time in mind. As I haven't done much cycling, I'll be happy to finish without major problems and enjoy myself while cycling for a couple of hours.

I've done this race twice before, and really liked it. I hope this time it'll be even better!

Race Report Rennsteig – Part 3

2009-05-22T23:08:00.001+02:00

“Only” 18k to go – but being somewhat tired and with a long uphill to start, it didn’t feel to good. There were only a few people around me and it was getting a bit lonely. Strangely, people’s rhythms seemed to be quite different, when I was running, I was overtaking the same people that ran by me a few minutes ago. And again, and again ..

After about 7:45h, I reached the highest elevation of the race:

Maybe this released some hidden energy, (or I put on the right playlist on my iPod,) but around this point I started to feel really great .. or I just like running downhill.

Listening to “Gonna fly now (Theme from Rocky)”, I was really starting to fly. “Smoke on the water”, the “Pirates of the Caribbean Theme”, “Eye of the Tiger”, “Jump” – I had unlimited energy. The next 45 minutes I was on top of the world – it was so great, I almost cried. My pace got down to about 5 min/k (of course I was overtaking a ton of people), and my average HR for these sections was the highest during the whole race.

But even the best sections have to end, which was for me about 2k from the finish:

(It was a good thing I had read some race reports before – there is no 70k sign. If you’re looking for it at this point, I’m sure this can be a bit of a bummer!)

I had decided to put the iPod away and to really enjoy the last two k, Unfortunately, I had to struggle a little bit to get through the streets of Schmiedefeld, but after 8:55:17 I was really happy to cross the finish line:

Race Report Rennsteig – Part 2

2009-05-21T21:18:00.001+02:00

The middle section of the race continued to be a bit slower than planned, but I made steady progress.

The aid stations and the volunteers were great. A lot of stuff to eat & drink, and always a clearly-labeled, big “menu”. I was eating salami bread, different types of sausages (with mustard!) and tried the “Schleim”. Literally translated it means “slime”, and it’s like grits but made from wheat with different fruits added. It tasted okay, but my stomach didn’t like it too much, so I switched back to more “middle-of-the-road” stuff like apples and bananas. I was also drinking some coke (at least the “East-German” brand VitaCola) and was constantly sipping from my Camelbak. At least I wasn’t getting hungry or thirsty …

A lot of sights I had read about in other people’s reports - like the trumpet player in the “middle of nowhere” - actually near the halfway-mark:

I enjoyed some short phone calls – but with reception not being too good, I couldn’t talk with too many people. I probably passed the marathon mark walking up another long & steep hill. Then I saw the first sign with a number larger than 42:

I was getting a bit tired, but I totally enjoyed the beautiful green, hilly scenery:

The next time I met with my parents and my wife was near the ski jumps in Oberhof. This was at the 55k aid station at “Grenzadler”. I had hoped to be here in under 6 hours, but when I got there 6:40h had passed. I still felt okay, and was very confident that I would finish. “Only” 18k to the finish – probably a bit over two hours, so 9 hours was still possible …

Race Report Rennsteig – Part 1

2009-05-20T23:17:00.004+02:00

Race morning was a bit chaotic. My parents overslept, so we left a bit later than I would have liked from our hotel. After we got to Eisenach, I took a few photos and checked in my clothes (to be brought to the finish in Schmiedefeld). The lines in front of the toilet were a bit long at 10 minutes before the start, but I still decided to wait (not many people coming after me, though). Some people in front of me left for the start, but it was getting awfully close. I had to take a deep breath to remind me that it probably didn’t matter if I was a few minutes late for the start. So I took my time and listened to the start count down from a porta potti. When I finished a minute or two later and made it to the start area, there were still enough people waiting to start. So I just got going, and as Rennsteig is a modern “chip time” race, it wasn’t a problem at all.

Right before crossing the start-line.

It was quite cold, so I started with my long tights. An easy jog through town, a right hand turn, and the first hill. People started walking, and so did I. A little bit later we left the road for the smaller trails and there was a bit of unplanned walking because of the congestion. The uphills continued, and so did the walking.

My time plan was out of the window as soon as I hit the 5k mark - a bit over 40 minutes instead of the “guesstimated” 35. The pace felt okay, relaxed but not too slow, with some walking when the uphills were getting steep. So I decided to continue in that fashion and not worry about any time goals I may have had.

View of the Wartburg (in fog) after about 6k.

After 6.8k we hit the first aid station, and a bit afterwards I saw my wife and my parents. Smiling, I gave them my long tights (it was getting warm enough to run in the short tights) and told them I’d be a bit slower than planned.

The next time I saw them was at the 17.7k mark. The uphills were taking much more time than I had planned, but I tried to take things easy and controlled.

It’s still a cross country race!

At the 26.8k mark, I had hit the end of the long uphill section. Unfortunately, that also meant going on the first long downhill section – but that was way too steep to be properly runnable and not really a chance to make up lost time. I was more than 20 minutes behind my initial time plan – so instead of 8 hours (as planned) 9 hours was a bit more realistic. Again, I saw my parents and my wife (more smiles) and ate a bit at the aid station.

I felt okay, I hadn’t wasted any unnecessary energy, we were having some nice weather (clouds and fog had given way to sunny weather), great scenery and I was really enjoying myself.

QuickNews: Rennsteig

2009-05-17T20:53:00.000+02:00

Just a short post to let everyone interested know that I finished the Rennsteiglauf of 72.7k in 8:55h.

Even though this is almost exactly 1h slower than what I had planned, I’m still happy with the way the race went. The hills were much “worse” than I had anticipated, and they took a lot more time that I thought. I made it through the race with a lot of uphill walking and almost no problems. I even finished strong and had a great last 10k.

I really enjoyed the race and will post a more detailed report after we’re back from visiting our friends.

Ready to run

2009-05-15T18:43:00.003+02:00

The night before the race.
Always a little bit scary. Did I train enough? Did I do too much in the week before the race. Will I recover in time from the last har session? Did I eat enough? Too much? My head is spinning from what I could have done better .. or just different.
Over the years. I have learned to switch off these thoughts. This may be stuff for an analysis a week from now, but nothing to help me for tomorrow. Whatever has been done, cannot be changed. Whatever hasn't been done, has to wait for "next time".
All that is left is to catch some sleep and rest, and get my mind fired up to go running tomorrow for eight hours (or even longer). The quesy feeling in my stomach is just anticipation.
I'm so looking forward to tomorrow .. something non-runners will never understand - not even my wife and my family. But they'll still be there to support me, and will be be happy with me when I finish. I'm ready to run!

Planning Rennsteig

2009-05-13T23:31:00.001+02:00

A few weeks ago, I posted a general idea for my Rennsteig race. I arrived at roughly a 6 min/k pace (plus some extra time for the hills), with a goal of under 8 hours for the complete distance). But for my wife and parents (who will come to support me before, during and after the race), I had to come up with a more detailed plan so they know when to show up where.

My rough goal time is 8 hours (= 480 minutes)
Rennsteig has about 1500m of ascent, at 3 extra minutes per 100m “up”, that’ll take about 45 minutes (which leaves 435 minutes)
In order to run the 72.7k in that time, you have to be just a bit quicker than a 6 Min/k pace. If I base my calculations on a 5:55 Min/k pace, that’ll leave me some cushion to come in under 8 hours.

Based on this pacing, here’s the breakdown by sections:

Section	Distance	Height gain	Time/ section	Total time
Eisenach to Grenzwiese	26,8	800	3:02	3:02
to Neue Ausspanne	14,0	100	1:26	4:28
to Grenzadler	13,9	200	1:28	5:56
to Schmiedefeld	18,0	400	1:59	7:55

My wife and my parents will try to be at these stations, and I hope to be able to see them.

Now I’ve got to and pack my things, my parents and I will drive down tomorrow.

Weather Report Eisenach

2009-05-11T19:23:00.005+02:00

Here's what I could find online (wetteronline) with regards to the weather in Eisenach for Saturday (race day @ Rennsteig):
(Low/High in °C, clouds, wind, date of forecast)
4 / 13 / sunny / NE 3-4 / May 11th
10 / 13 / rainy / NE 2-3 / May 12th
11 / 14 / rainy / W 2 / May 13th
10 / 17 / cloudy / SW 3 / May 14th

Sounds like almost perfect running weather. I'll update with newer information once I've got it.

Last longer Run

2009-05-10T22:33:00.001+02:00

Yesterday evening I went on my last longer run before Rennsteig. We had a busy day with shopping and friends over for a barbecue, so it was 8pm before I managed to get started. I was somewhat tired by then, but still wanted to get a last quality session in. As I had bagged my Tuesday faster run and I wanted to run 20k, I combined the two sessions, so I ran 20k with 8*4 Min faster segments.

During the run I did not feel good. I was burping a lot (the food had not quite settled, but it stayed down). Also, I realized I was pretty tired, so towards the end I was walking the hills and tried to take things a bit easier. Also, it was quite warm … I wasn’t a happy runner. But when I checked my splits afterwards, I realized I felt pretty bad, but was running really well.

So, another little bit of encouragement. I’ve decided to put a 60 Min cap on any running this week, probably just a few easy runs. I hope to be fully recovered by Saturday morning …

Tired ..

2009-05-05T21:31:00.001+02:00

Yesterday, I went to do a hill session with a friend that didn’t feel too hard. But after that and a long day at work, I didn’t have any energy to do my interval session. So I canned that after 3k and turned around. My wife made some dinner while I showered, and now I’m going to bed early.

Maybe I’ll have more power tomorrow .. still want to do a 20k session over the weekend before I’m entering taper mode. We’ll see …

Run recovery & first bike sessions

2009-05-03T16:50:00.001+02:00

After the marathon, my focus for this week has been recovery. In running, all I did was three short & easy runs that I was able to complete without any problems. It seems that my legs have recovered well from Hamburg and that I think that running a marathon three weeks before my ultra is not going to have some adverse effects. But you never know until you do it, so I guess I’ll have to wait for the 60k mark to find out if I’m really well prepared. Still optimistic ;.)

As noted in my previous post, I was taking a few days off to get my bike ready for “spring”. I also managed to get the first bike sessions in. I like to go on bike sessions if there is no pressure to finish quickly because of other obligations. So it felt good to just go out and spin a bit. I can tell that my legs are not used to it, but I hope that they’ll get the hang of it pretty quickly – after all I’m still thinking of doing the Vätternrundan (300k bike) in the middle of June. Not sure if I’ll manage to get in bike shape by then, and I’m not going to worry it before Rennsteig.

Just two more weeks …