Back in mountain business: Ulriken Opp 2016

Sorgen forgikk meg på Ulrikens topp...

Third race and third personal record of 2016! Yesterday I participated in the Ulriken Opp mountain race. It has two versions; one of length 1.7 km with elevation gain 410 m, and one of length 3.6 km with elevation gain 605 m. With almost no mountain training since December, I did not dare to do the long one. Moreover, I had done the short course two years ago, and I wanted to see if I could beat my time from then.

In 2014, my first time in this race, the short course took me 26 minutes and 45 seconds. Last year I was in shape to do better, but I could not participate due to injury. This year, I did not know what to expect. Since the Christmas Whisky Race in December, I have not been running up mountains. However, I did start uphill interval training three weeks ago, and I have done a few trail runs involving steep hills. My general form has been improving, albeit slowly, since I started running again in September, and my time at Bergen City half marathon was better this year than in 2014. So I had some hope of beating my time from 2014 also in this race.

But not practicing at all is really a drawback. With no form improvement, just practicing the course a couple of times can improve the race time with at least about a minute. Fortunately, when I was in Bergen about a month ago, I had a go up Stoltzekleiven, which was faster than I had expected, and that gave me some additional hope and mental confidence that I would be able to push myself yesterday.

The first couple of hundred meters of the short course are not as steep as the rest, and it is easy to do the mistake of running too fast at this point. It never pays off! I think I was able to do it more or less correctly. Then it gets steeper, and it is important to find a pace that is fast enough but still saves your energy for the last part. The last 700 m are brutally steep, and then you just have to go with all that you have. I was so lucky that many of my friends from Varegg/Melkesyre/Fjellgeitene were standing by and cheering at this last part of the course. I had in particular outstanding help from Åshild just before the stairs at the end. Not only did she cheer and push, but she also started running by me! With her help I started to run and kept running all the way to the stairs. At the finish, I was totally exhausted and my arms ached badly, which for me is a sign that I did my best (I think it is lactic acid creeping all the way up). As threw myself at the feet of my friend Michal who came to finish just before me (and whom I tried to catch all the way), I was very happy with my finish time: 25:12. One and a half minutes better than 2014!

Almost all goals of 2015 got killed by injury, and Stoltzekleiven was the single personal record of last year. With that background it feels indescribably wonderful to break my previous records on all the races of this year so far. Perhaps it is not entirely correct to speak about a record for the Deer Race of February, as it was the first time, but since it gave me my first class victory ever, I think it counts. For next year, I set it as a goal to do the long course with the aim of finishing in less than 40 minutes. Of course the main goal is to manage to stay out of injury...

Shit happens; look forward, be dedicated, and surround yourself with good people!

The road to Amsterdam

Counting down to Amsterdam marathon... 

For the last four months I have been getting used to street running again, very slowly increasing distance and trying to pick up speed. Most of this time I have just been running flat, sometimes trying to hang on to my faster friends, sometimes long and slow, sometimes just going with the feeling.  A few weeks ago I decided that it was time to go back to regular interval training. I am very used to interval sessions with my running groups in Bergen, but they are less common among my friends in Istanbul.

 

There is some debate about whether or not interval training is really necessary. Can you not achieve form improvement with just long and fast runs? I have been reading a lot about this, and my conclusion is that interval training is not a must, but it is a better way of improving your form because you do not wear out your body. One can get the same improvement with less running and less damage on the body with short and intensive intervals compared to longer fast runs. 

It's still more a hope than a goal, but I signed up for full marathon in Amsterdam in October, and most of my training until then is geared towards it. A couple of months ago I got hold of a booklet that Oslo marathon has printed for preparing for that marathon in September. It has two training schemes, one for novices and one for advanced athletes, and for both it definitely advises interval sessions every week.

Adjusting the instructions of the booklet to my level and daily life, I set up the following weekly plan for my next couple of months:

Monday: 12-14 km tempo run in the morning, Pilates in the afternoon
Tuesday. Uphill intervals in the morning, Pilates in the afternoon
Wednesday: Strength training for the legs including HSR
Thursday: 10-12 km easy run, Pilates in the afternoon
Friday: Flat intervals possibly on treadmill followed by strength training
Saturday: Long run, slowly increasing distance to 25 and then to 30 km.
Sunday: Rest

It doesn't really require too much change from what I have been doing so far, except that I have been swimming on Wednesdays and resting on Fridays. Although I set up the above scheme a couple of weeks ago, I haven't been able to implement it fully yet. First I was recovering from Bergen City half marathon, and now I have to start tapering for Ulriken Opp in 6 days and Bergen Fjellmaraton in about 11 days... But I have started interval training! I have already had two uphill and four flat interval sessions.

The road to Amsterdam is long, and I know that it will be hard to follow my schedule tightly. In July I will be on holidays at a much warmer place, and I will have to replace some of the running and all the Pilates sessions with swimming. In August and September, just when I should be concentrating on the last phase preparations for the race in October, there are all sorts of other races to keep me occupied: Skåla Opp, Os Triathlon, and Stoltzekleiven Opp. Every race takes its own preparations and there is the rest period before and after, that messes up with the training plan. On the other hand, these races will force me to train in alternative ways, which I think will be useful in hopefully keeping me out of injury.

 

 

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going...

The benefits of walking

It's not what you think...

No, this is not about the benefits of walking over running. I'm talking about the benefits of walking in addition to running.

 

I have been trying to find explanations to why my hamstrings and problem areas in general feel much better when I am in Istanbul compared to when I am in Bergen. I have been exploring the possibilities of cold vs warm weather and that maybe it is all in my head. Recently I have developed a new theory. Perhaps is all the walking I do in my daily life in Istanbul which does not happen in Bergen.

In Bergen, I drive to work, I drive to training, I drive to my fitness center, and I drive to the starting point of my running activities. So my day consists of sitting still most of the time and then training and running. It involves almost no walking. Whereas in Istanbul, I don't have a car, so I walk to work (including some serious uphills if I don't catch the shuttle), I walk between places I want to go and the closest metro stations (I have almost given up taxis due to unpredictable traffic), and I walk to start running. I even walk more at work, going to and from lunch on campus. On most working days, I have in total 6-8 pieces of 5-15 min walking, which sums up to about an hour a day.

I think all this walking spread throughout the day is good therapy for sore muscles, stiff joints, and tight tendons. It's like a little massage every now and then, it loosens up the muscles, and it helps them to get rid of residues of lactic acid and other bad stuff that results from running. Recently I've read many places that sitting is the most dangerous activity that you can do. In fact, regardless of how much you exercise or run, the number of hours you sit in total during a day is directly related to your your life expectancy. The more sitting the shorter life. So the conclusion is clear:

Get up and walk!

Negative or positive splits? A post race analysis

Negative is sometimes positive...

Last week I was writing that Bergen City half marathon course is perfect for negative splits. I was pretty sure that I had a negative split during the race. However, when the detailed results came out a day or two later, I was surprised to see that I had a pretty even split. How come? Was it good that I did the hills as slowly as I did, after all? Or were the first 2-3 flat kilometers just too fast?

OK, let's start from the beginning. A split is simply the half distance of your race. You have a negative split if you run the first half slower than the second half, and you have a positive split if you run the first half faster than the second half. Most of the advice directed to runners advocate for negative splits, even for short races. The importance becomes more as the races become longer (either in time or in distance). The point of a negative split is to start out slowly enough that your heart rate does not go close to lactate threshold in the beginning. You do not start wearing out your glycogen stores until you have made a substantial part of the distance. Then when you reach the critical point of your race, towards the end, when your body is really going low on all energy sources, you still have some left to finish the race gracefully.

In fact it was a marathon pace calculator that I found online that first made me start thinking that I could perhaps run a marathon in a not too embarrassing time. That calculator says that you can run a marathon in just a few minutes more than twice your half marathon time. Provided that you do the training towards it of course. It also gives you an exact heart rate and pace plan to follow throughout the race, with a clear negative split. All my own experience during training for long runs also gave me an indication that negative splits were most natural for me. For long slow runs, I normally start out with pace 6:30 and usually end with pace 5:45 quite naturally, without even pushing. Even for short races, like Stoltzekleiven, I know that if I start out too fast, I get punished in the end (although my split is always positive there no matter what). Many faster friends have also told stories of how they got much better times in uphill races when they managed to keep it slow in the beginning.

With this background I was pretty surprised when I found out that  I had run the Bergen City with an even split. OK, it is in fact a little bit negative, but with a pace difference of merely 5 seconds. Then I studied the splits of many of my friends, and indeed in Bergen most people have a negative split; the course is very natural for that. But whether or not negative split is the best strategy to get the best finish time is much debated. It is the best strategy to have a good race experience and to be able to finish in good shape, but is it really best for achieving best possible time?

Looking at statistics of the finish times of long races, by far most people run with a positive split. Of course amateurs make the mistake of starting out too fast and then losing a lot of time at the end, but even pretty fast amateurs mostly run with a positive split. Real elites, though, run mainly with negative splits. But what is best for an elite is probably not what is best for me. First of all I run for quite a lot longer time than the elites of the same race, so regardless of how I start I will get very tired in the end. Those who argue against negative splits for amateurs explain it with what is most intuitive: you will get tired in the end no matter how fast or slow you run in the beginning, so just run when you can and make as much distance as possible. But I know that this strategy fails if you push too hard in the beginning. I have seen so many examples of it, including myself.

Thus I am now a little bit lost. I like to analyze what I did right and wrong during a race, and now I am really not sure about the Bergen City half marathon. When I was reporting to you last week, I was thinking that I was too slow up the hills. Now, I am wondering whether I was simply too fast in the first 2-3 kilometers during the flat part. I felt no exhaustion what so ever during that first part, and when the hills came I slowed down and felt good all the way, but perhaps the start got my glycogen going too soon anyway. Or perhaps I am right to think that I was too slow up the hills, I could have saved a couple of minutes there, and still manage the last part as I did. It is not easy to know. One thing is for sure, I was not as exhausted at the end as I was in Oslo one and a half years ago, so I could most probably have gone faster. But if I could, then why did I not in the second half? Was I a bit too afraid for what was yet to come? Was I just not determined enough this time? Or was this exactly the right time for me at this point?

So many questions, so few answers...

I take my city back - Bergen City Marathon 2016

Back in Bergen, back at my very first half marathon course.

Bergen City Marathon took place yesterday, and I was one of the thousands who participated in the half marathon. It is a wonderful feeling to be able to race this distance again after struggling with injury the whole of 2015. With no street races since January 2015, and no half marathon races since September 2014, I really did not know what to expect and what to aim for at yesterday's race. The 2014 version of this race was my very first half marathon, and I finished in 2:00. If I had been able to participate last year, I would aim for something like 1:55. But this year? I restarted street running practice just three months ago, and I did not have a proper estimation of my form.

I came to Bergen already a week ago, and ever since I arrived I felt my legs heavy, my joints aching, and my injured hamstrings tendon very tense and painful. I figured out that the best thing I could do to prepare for the race was to rest properly. So, during the last week I only had an easy mountain hike on Monday and a short run on Wednesday. Thursday my legs started to feel better, and on Friday they were better than in a long time. I felt ready and confident that I could at least finish.

Bergen City Half marathon course is truly beautiful; it takes you by the sea, by the mountains, along a lake, along the fjord, inside two parks, and at the end some city streets. However, it has a total elevation gain of 255 meters, so it is not an easy course to speed. For a negative split, though, it is perfect. The main elevation gain is done between the 3rd and the 8th kilometer, which forces you to slow down, and then it is mostly downhill or flat for the rest (except a small killer hill at the 18th km). For the first 3 km it is completely flat, and I felt very good and fast. My tempo was around 5 min/km for that first part, and my heart rate not above threshold.

Then started the uphills, and I think I went a bit too slow there. The thing is, I have this lactate threshold value of heart rate 162 from an August 2014 test. I don't know if this is still accurate for my current form, but I did not dare to pass it in the first half. The resulting speed up the hills was not as high as I was hoping. The good news is that I felt pretty good at 162 and not at all like pushing it too hard, and on the flatter parts I could speed up to pace 5:15-5:30 min/km without reaching that heart rate. At the downhills I went as fast as 4:30, and my heart rate went even down then. But at some point I started suspecting that I was feeling a little bit too good. As far as I can remember I was in pain more of the time in the two previous street half marathons I raced. This time at the 15th km, I was thinking to myself that I was enjoying myself too much and I should try to increase speed.

I did increase a bit, and after the 19th km, I gave it all, and my speed for the last two kilometers was around 5 min/km. The last 500 meters were pretty painful, my legs started to stiffen. I ended up with 1:58 as my finish time, which is 2 minutes better than my 2014 time at this course, but 4 minutes worse than my time in Oslo in September 2014. Before start I had a slight hope of 1:55, but in the end I was really happy to manage below 2 hours.

Every race gives more experience and new wisdom. This particular race ended up giving a tremendous amount of wonderful treats in addition. Many many of my friends from Varegg/Melkesyre/Fjellgeitene were either racing or cheering along the course. Our son Aksel added to the joy by following us on the course and taking pictures. I heard my name called out so many times during the race and every time it gave me a new boost of energy. Afterwards it was great to gather for a drink in the sun, and in the evening there was a big dinner party where I could catch up with many friends some of whom I had not seen for a long while. My running buddy Berna from Istanbul came to Bergen just for this race, and she was very warmly welcomed by my Bergen group. Her performance was outstanding; although it was only 6 days after her last half marathon in Madrid, she improved her time from then by 3 minutes yesterday! Frank was also very happy; thanks to my advice about full rest this past week, he had a new PB of 1:35!

It was a wonderful day.