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!
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.
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 …
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!
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!
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 …
After taking a little injury break, it’s time to fess up … so here is my latest update from the weight front.
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 …
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,
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!
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 …
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 ..
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.
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.
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 …
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.
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 …
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:
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.
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.
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 …
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 …
I’m writing this while the Ironman Hawaii race is going on … go Mitch!
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!
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.
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.
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:
There are two more races I have lined up in October:
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!
Sunday, I was racing the second leg of my Autumn campaign, a half-marathon along the river Alster in Hamburg.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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:
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:
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).
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 …
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.
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:
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!
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 …
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.
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 …
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).
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:
This is the way my training plan looks like when put on a calendar:
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.
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.
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 .
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.
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.
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?
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.
