Ending 2010 and Planning 2011

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

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

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

Plans for 2011

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

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

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

Planning the rest of 2009

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?

Training plan for Rennsteig

Here's a rough plan of my training plan until Rennsteiglauf:

• (6)Week of March 30 (this week) - 40k+
  Recover from race last week, on the weekend 2 runs of ~1.30+h
  
• (5) Week of April 6 (Easter) - 80k+
  13k Tempo run during the week, then 3 longish sessions during the Easter week (ideally 3h, 2h, 1.30h)
• (4) Week of April 13 - 40k+
  Recovery - trip with my wife to Disneyland, maybe some easy short runs
  
• (3) Week of April 20 - 80k+
  13k Tempo run during the week, Hamburg Marathon as long training run (goal: sub 4h)
  
• (2) Week of April 27 - 40-50k
  Recovery, maybe 1.45h on the weekend
  
• (1) Week of May 4 - 60-70k
  13k Tempo run during the week, 2h+1h on the weekend
  
• Race Week - Week of May 11
  Easy, then race Rennsteiglauf - 73k (goal - sub8h)