Last race of the year, a little whisky, and some reflections

Join a running group!

I've said that before, I'll say it again. If you have an interest in running, there is nothing like being a part of a running group.

You have of course your family, friends, and colleagues, but nobody can understand you like your running buddies when it comes to training and competition goals, injuries, frustrations, joys, victories, and failures. With who else can you talk for hours on a single injury history, or on a training period towards a competition, or on heart rate zones? Who else will always cheer you, encourage you and motivate you whatever your goals are, and comfort you and give you pep talk during your down periods? And every now and then you can be even lucky to make a new friend for life, getting into deeper topics and opening your hearts to each other.

Friday evening was the annual Little Christmas Whisky Race with a party afterwards. I must admit that I am still struggling to get back my form. I was 4 seconds faster this year than last, but the ground and air conditions were perfect, so I should have done better. OK, so a marathon breaks you down, but think of all that training I invested in before Amsterdam. Should that not pay off now when the fatigue is gone and my energy is back? I could easily get buried in this kind of negative thoughts were it not for the frame around the race. With the whisky bar at the finish at the top and the party down at the club house afterwards, there is no way one can feel down after such an event. So yesterday, instead I found myself thinking about how fun it is to get older.

Yes you read right. When I say this to my younger friends and colleagues, they are always surprised. Perhaps I would also have been if I heard it in my twenties from people in their forties. My goodness, I remember how sorry I felt for them then. When my older colleagues at that time spoke about reading glasses and graying hair, I pitied them. Still they were the ones to have the most fun at parties, and I was always astonished by that. (I mean, like, isn't life almost over?) Now I know why. As we get older, as long as we are lucky to keep our health, life gets easier on many plans. Kids are growing and can take more and more care of themselves, you have reached a level in you career,  for most the economic situation improves, and you get more time for yourself. If you, at this point in life, start investing some time in a rewarding activity, like sports, and on top of that find a group of people to do it with, then life becomes a play ground and you are back to the joys of childhood all over again.

Just think about the race and the party afterwards, and all the people involved in organizing such an event. Carrying food, drinks, and fire wood up to the finish area, registering people and timing the racers, preparing the party, baking cakes, doing kitchen duty, cleaning afterwards, .... And how effortless and easy it all goes when there are so many people who are willing to contribute. It is always like this. There is always somebody who takes initiative to organize a party, a dinner, a weekend trip, a training session, a mountain hike, you name it. With all the extremely sad things going on around the world, I feel so blessed to be surrounded with all this kindness and positive energy.

My experiences from my local club Varegg, with my Bergen running group Melkesyre and Fjellgeitene, and my Istanbul running group Istrunbul, who embraced me so warmly for the brief time I spent there, make me think that running groups all around the world work in this positive way. If you're rather interested in biking or swimming, or other sports, there are groups for those as well.  I follow online quite a few such groups both in Bergen and Istanbul, and they all seem to burst with positive energy. There is no reason to hesitate. Don't do it alone.

Join a group!

Ingrid's recipe

No, not for Christmas cookies :-)

Although my main focus for the time being is uphill running and leg strength training, I haven't forgotten all about flat running. Every now and then I like to do a long run, but there haven't been any short or fast runs recently.

Still I want to build a basis for the street races of next season, and I have stumbled upon some interesting advice from the Norwegian multi-distance world champion Ingrid Kristiansen. In her blog, she gives a winter treadmill schedule for setting a 10k PB in the spring. She indicates the speed of a progressive 50 min run, which should feel very easy at this point. But she will increase the speed as the winter proceeds. Her initial advice is for advanced runners who want to do 10 k below 40 minutes, and this is how it looks: start with pace 5:55. Every 5 minutes, decrease the pace 10 seconds. The last 5 minutes are at pace 4:25.

Now, my goal would rather be to manage 10k at 50 minutes or below, which means exactly 1 minute slower per kilometer. So, it is very easy to change the suggested paces to what I think fits for me: start at 6:55, and decrease 10 seconds every 5 minutes, ending at 5:25 for the last five minutes. Ingrid also gives a heart rate indication of how the pace should feel. Her heart rate at start is around 140 and at the end 160, well below her threshold.

To test this on the treadmill, I translated the pace (min/km) to speed (km/h) since this is how a treadmill works. I ended up with the following schedule, changing every five minutes: 8.7 - 8.9 - 9.2 - 9.5 - 9.8 - 10.1 - 10.3 - 10.6 - 10.9 - 11.1. It looked really easy compared to what I manage normally. So far so good. But I had forgotten how boring I find treadmill running, and how hot I get when I run indoors.... The heart rate started out even lower than what Ingrid suggested, but it ended up higher at the end.

In general, I do get a higher heart rate when I run indoors, which I think is due to the temperature. No matter where, I always find the indoor conditions too hot to run on the treadmill. I suppose a training studio holds at least 20 degrees C and of course there is no wind.... If I were to design a studio, I would keep a separate room for the treadmills, set the temperature at 14 degrees, and install some fans to simulate pleasant wind. In fact, perhaps every treadmill could be covered, like a glass bubble, and one could set the temperature as low as one wanted inside there, and the sound as high as one wanted and played one's own music without using ear plugs. I wonder if such mills exist. If not, perhaps I should apply for a patent... :-)

Anyway, so treadmill running is no fun, and I must admit that I am not sure I will be able to follow Ingrid's recipe after all. Perhaps I can rather do it outside, on a flat stretch. I found it very pleasing and motivating that it is such an easy workout, so I do want to follow it up in one way or the other.

What I do enjoy much more, are treadmill intervals at Barry's Bootcamp. I owe a lot to this kind of training, which brought me up to shape to run my first half marathons. But I haven't done it much after I got the taste of outdoors training. I do regularly go to Barry's Bootcamp still, but normally I have either personal training session with Ketil, or I do a pure strength training session, called double floor, which means that one skips the treadmill part of the class and stays on the floor throughout the entire session. This week, though, I joined two sessions with treadmill running. I had forgotten how fun it was! And I realized that I'd lost a lot of sprint speed compared to before. So I'll definitely do more of this through the winter.

The rope jump competition is also very useful for running form it turns out. I have read that many top athletes rope jump several times a week to keep their ankles strong, their tendons soft, and to increase their calf strength. I can now do 2:15 at a time. And I really feel the increased strength. It is so great to have friends who initiate such games to combine fun (there is a lot of incredibly funny discussion every single day), competition, and increased strength and form.

Play hard, win easy! .... or the opposite... whichever inspires and motivates you :-)

Working on the uphill form

The Blåman races showed that my uphill form had declined a lot since last year. OK, so I was still in post marathon recovery period, but come on: for the last 11 months I had mainly been street running, most of it flat. When I resumed strength training after a break of about 6 weeks, it became also evident that I had lost quite a bit of strength in my legs.

But all that is going to be fixed now! First of all, fortunately the post marathon fatigue is finally gone and my energy is back! The Blåmann races inspired me to move most of my training to uphill running and walking. During the long training period towards Amsterdam, there were several spectacular mountain hikes during beautiful weekends that I could not join due to the 30+ km runs in our training schedule. I now realize how badly I had really missed the mountains. It feels wonderful to be in the low season and not to have to train towards a particular goal (yet!), so I simply pick the training sessions that I feel like participating, and these days the offered menu contains mainly uphills. 

One of the things I've been wanting to try all the way since last year is the long uphill intervals of Fjellgeitene on Thursdays. They are as long as 8 minutes! And there are six of them! Scary enough just the thought of it. It took me more than a year, and many conversations with and encouragement from Lars the chief goat,  to mentally get ready for these. Finally I tried them this week! Yey! And it was not even that scary! Between the 8 minute intervals are 2 minute breaks. In the breaks, the group jogs downwards. To compensate my slowness compared to the rest, I rather walked uphill during the breaks. In the end this worked out a bit too well; I got further than everybody, and followed Jonathan Albon (!!!) all the way to the top of Rundemanen. Next time, I think I can allow myself to either stop during the breaks or perhaps even slowly walk down.

Fjellgeitene also inspires in a very fun way when it comes to leg strength and plyometric training. I think we can call it the annual winter challenge. Last year, there was the daily toe raises challenge. How many toe raises can you do without a break? You stand on a step with your heels hanging on the outside. You lower yourself slowly, then raise yourself on your toes slowly, and repeat. This year's challenge is rope jumping. How many seconds can you rope jump without a break? It has to be done in a speed of about 100-120 jumps a minute, and the rope has to pass under your feet between every single jump (no double jumping). It is surprisingly tiring! So far my record is 60 seconds, but fortunately the challenge continues until February, so there is still time to improve.

All this is of course not enough to get my leg strength back. As promised, I have returned to my weekly personal training sessions with Ketil, and my goodness it was about time! After the first session I could neither sit down nor get up for several days; my legs were incredibly sore. The good news is that strength comes back pretty quickly. Also the running form is coming back. The best indicator for this is the Hordnes forest runs of Melkesyre every Monday. This course is pretty hilly, with a lot of ups and downs, so even the prescribed easy pace of 6:30 can feel challenging. At least it did two weeks after Amsterdam. It felt like a race. Since then it got better and better, and last Monday it was finally as easy as it should be.

But don't think that I have forgotten all about flat running. I have something new to test out. I will tell you next week :-)

Wuthering heights

Or "gone with the wind"?

Both titles are fitting. Winter came early to Bergen this year, and most of my running has been at wuthering heights during the past couple of weeks. When it comes to my form and my willpower to push myself hard, both seem to have gone with the wind.

It is now four weeks since Amsterdam marathon, and things are slowly getting better, but really really slowly. At least the joy of running, the eagerness to train, and the pleasure of racing and practicing with friends are all back, and I am inexpressibly grateful for it. But I have still not got back the form I had just before Amsterdam. My training volume is much lower, too, both weekly mileage and how often I run. The day after a training session, I don't feel recovered enough, so every second day is a resting day.

The good news is: all this seems to be very normal. I have been a bit disappointed in myself because all my marathon friends seem to be doing much better than me. So I started to search and read about the subject. It turns out that getting back the form one had at the time of the marathon takes around 6 weeks. And that is if one is cautious and builds up the training volume and intensity very slowly, like the reverse of a taper. Because the risk of injury is higher all the way up to 8 weeks after a marathon. So, without knowing it, I have actually been following the recipe to the letter! Things are going forward, and I do have a plan.

As promised, I'm participating in the Blåmanen races, and the practices towards them. The weather has not really been on our side, but I find it easy to motivate myself to participate, because I allow myself to not push myself to the maximum. This is exactly my plan for the winter. Consider it low season. Do not try to impress anybody; just build form. Skip training when things don't feel right. Stay out of injury.  Participate in the coming uphill races, Blåmanen, Whisky run, and Fløyen. They provide the best possible training and wonderful social boost before and after the race.

For the first Blåmanen race last weekend, we woke up to the first snow of the season. "Oh, already on with the spike shoes... " Still I found the race on the snowy ground with a little sun shining between the clouds really pleasurable. Probably a bit too pleasurable, as my time was 2 minutes worse than last year. Of course there was snow and ice this year, which perhaps compensates for some of the lost time. On the other hand my running form was not at its top last year, so I should still have been able to do at least the same time. But hey! Now I have the wonderful excuse that it was still marathon recovery period :-)

The second Blåmanen race yesterday was a little bit worse. The conditions were a lot tougher. Windy, icy, rainy, ... Every step seemed to drag the energy of a kilometer out of me. At a few points I was so angry at the ground conditions and the wind that I shouted a few swear words. I think I managed to push a bit harder this time, but still I ended up walking more than I was planning to. On the other hand, on these steep hills, I am not sure that running is always faster than walking. I was happy at the end to see that I had exactly the same time as last year. Although the course is a bit flatter this year, the ground conditions weigh perhaps 3-4 minutes.

The final part of my plan for the winter is to go back to proper strength training. I really like weights, but for some reason I haven't found it easy to make time for this kind of training recently. So I have now signed up for weekly PT sessions with Ketil again, starting this coming week! I am really looking forward to them, and I know that he will very quickly bring back my motivation to become strong again.

Only two more weeks to tiptop shape! :-)

Post-marathon limbo

Ain't no mountain high enough...

The state of mind I've been in since Amsterdam marathon two weeks ago, is mildly put, interesting. I had promised myself during the long training period towards the marathon that I would take a good rest of at least two weeks afterwards. I was really looking forward to the rest, but I have perhaps been a bit surprised about how well I embraced it and felt like I didn't want it to end.

The first week of the rest was wonderful. We took a few days off and went to Spain, and it did me really good. Lots of good food and a little too much wine, in particular no running what so ever. Just a short swim one day, and otherwise slow walking mainly for sightseeing. When I saw runners on the beach, I was so happy that I didn't have to run. First alarm bell: "have to"??? I realized the last phases of the marathon training, combined with the worries about injuries, had felt more like something I had to do rather than something I wanted to do.

After coming home I was expecting the will to run to come back quickly, but it did not happen. On the contrary, I have been feeling pretty tired all the time. This past week, I found it hard to get up in the mornings, and felt completely finished in the evenings. A couple of planned (short and slow!) running sessions got canceled because I simply didn't feel up to it. I had good evidence that I did not have to push to get started again before my body felt ready. It is written all over the place that a body needs 2-3 weeks of rest (possibly with some easy training sessions) after a marathon. Although everything feels good, running 42 km makes a lot of small damages to the skeleton, muscles, and tendons. Going back to regular training before the body has had time to repair all these small damages, can result in serious injury. So I was happy to just enjoy the couch a few more days.

But as days passed, I was a bit worried that the will to run did not come back. I was expecting that I would have to limit myself compared how much I wanted to run, but quite the opposite happened. What was happening? Had the marathon taken away my will to run and train? The first Blåmanen race is only a little more than a week away, and I felt like I should get going, albeit easily, if I would have a chance at that. But I couldn't even find motivation to join that race. What? The most wonderful time of the year!? What happened to all that??? "Come on, how can anything like that ever compare to a marathon?" Aha, so that's it? Having completed such a goal that I have been working towards for so long, makes everything else lose importance? Feeling a little high on ourselves, are we? Hmm... not good.

Thursday evening, finally Frank pushed me to go for a run and then some strength training. It didn't feel good at all. I had been very happy about how my legs, tendons, hips and hamstrings felt so good after the race. But as soon as I started running, although extremely slowly, everything felt painful. Nothing felt right. I even discovered that I have an aching shoulder! After the terribly slow run we went for some strength training, and also there I found it difficult to push. I did not dare to strength train the two weeks before the race, so now it felt like I had lost all my muscles. A little bit of this, and a little bit of that, and I was done. Back home, back to the couch.

As bad as the Thursday session felt, I think it was the right thing to do. Already the day after I was feeling a lot better. Tried strength training again, and felt much stronger and infinitely more motivated. Then, yesterday I joined the Melkesyre Saturday uphill intervals. And that turned out to be exactly what I needed and I think it came exactly at the right moment. During the weeks before the race, I could not join these sessions since there was always some long run during the weekends. So I had really missed it and missed being with all my friends. This session gave me a surprisingly quick shift of mind. Before we started I was telling people that I would not run Blåmanen 1, but afterwards I felt pretty confident that I would. I even started to talk about Berlin marathon on the way down. Fortunately my more sensible friends quickly talked me out of it. And fortunately, there is already a quite hairy plan for 2017.

But first Frank and I need to buy new bikes...

Amsterdam marathon 2016

YESSSSS!!!!!

It happened! No injury, no cramps, no hitting the wall, and most things as planned (except the negative split, which became very positive). And it was SO worth it!!! All those months of training, all that worrying, and all the things I was whining about in earlier posts... it was totally worth it!

The week before the race: A sore throat makes me very worried throughout the week. I take the advice of experienced friends and do not run a single meter during the last 7 days. Just rest and drink a lot of lemon juice, hoping for the cold to go away. I am not sure whether this makes things sub-optimal or just perfect. My hamstrings are pretty tight, and perhaps they also need these 7 days to relax and loosen.  My body keeps playing games with me, and makes up new pains here and there, trying everything to prevent the coming hazardous event.

The day before the race: Our big group from Bergen meets at the airport in the morning and we travel together to Amsterdam. For the first time in a long while I feel great, and eager to run.  Arriving at the hotel in Amsterdam I meet my dear friend Berna from Istanbul. We have been looking forward to meeting and running this marathon together, and it is so good to see her. Like at Bergen City half marathon, she joins our Bergen group for the social events. We go and collect our start numbers, we have two carbohydrate heavy meals, and I go to bed at 10 pm, a little later than planned.

The morning of the race: Up early. Frank, Berna and I do not want a hotel breakfast. We have brought a lot of instant oatmeal, which is my standard pre-race meal, and we have that with coffee. I don't feel great and eager to run anymore. We go early to the Olympic Stadium, where the start is. It turns out to be a good idea, as there are long queues at the toilets. A last pre-race energy bar and a last sip of red beet juice. Ready but not enthusiastic. Fortunately, Berna has loads of positive energy, some of it transfers to me as well.

Minutes before the start: I am in my start group, warming up, jumping up and down. The feeling is strange. So incredibly many people. I am alone, Frank and Berna are in different groups. I expect my friends from Bergen to be in the same group as Frank. Suddenly "Ten Feet Tall" starts playing on the loudspeakers. I take this as a good sign. Just before start, my good friend Ove finds me in the crowd and wishes me luck. So happy to discover that I am not all alone. I get a little bit more strength. Still not really up to this, but hey, we start moving, and suddenly I am running! As I pass below the start sign I push the start button of my watch. "God, please don't let this become a big embarrassment..."

First 10 kilometers: I have a plan aiming for a finish time around 4 hours. The plan is to start with pace 5:53, then go to 5:46, 5:41, and then decrease pace to 5:34 after the 29th kilometer. For every pace, there is a matching heart rate that I am not suppose to go above. I try to take it easy for the first kilometers, I run much slower than the 4 hrs balloon, but still my pace ends up around 5:40, a little too fast. Heart rate is fine, though, so I don't worry too much about this. I keep an average of 5:45 pace for this piece, heart rate is fine, legs feel good, but I have a feeling of limbo. It is difficult to describe. For the first time in my life, I am participating in a race which I am not sure to be able to finish.

10-15 km: I need music. I was planning to save it for later, not use all my ammunition at once, but I want it now. I put it on at around 12 km. At 13th km, at the tunes of "I need a hero",  I suddenly feel a rush of positive energy. The pace is still 5:45, heart rate is perfect, and I start feeling that this might go well. I become very emotional, and even a few teardrops fall.  It is like it first hits me now: "I am actually running a marathon!!!". The parts of the course I was dreading are much more enjoyable than I was expecting. I am entertained, kilometers pass fast.

15-20 km: We are by a river, there is no shade from the sun. I find this part a bit too monotonous. I take an energy gel before every single water station, and slow down to take two cups of water at each of them. I swallow a cramp-fix tablet, too. I look forward to these water stations and they seem to come quicker and quicker, which is a good sign.

20-25 km: The other side of the river. A strong smell of agricultural fertilizer feels disturbing. I try to concentrate on other things. So many different types of people, so many various body shapes, ages, clothes, running styles, costumes, shoes... I am amused. It feels great to pass 21.1 km, although my watch shows 21.3. I prepare myself that I will be running 42.5 km instead of 42.2. My pace worsens a little, it is around 5:50 now, and half-way time is a minute behind schedule. Heart rate is good, I feel fine, so I am not worried. I am counting on that passing half way will give renewed energy.

25-30 km: Around me people are starting to walk. Already?? Some of them stop completely. To stretch a bit, and then they try to continue. I am supposed to speed up now, but it is impossible. Heart rate is still pleasant, and I have the energy, but legs are becoming stiff in a strange way. It is as if there is a thin layer of wet concrete on them that is slowly hardening. At some point pace is as bad as 6:45 and 7, and I am getting worried. But I manage to bring it up to closer to 6. Below 6 seems impossible now, and I am a little hesitant to push harder yet.

30-35 km: I am dreading the 35th km. I have heard so many stories of people having to stop exactly at this point. This is supposed to be the distance where many different mechanisms kick in, and I have never run this far before. Passing 34 feels nice, I am now farther than I have ever run before. 35 comes, I take my gel, nothing happens. Things are steady, no wall, no injury, no big pain, I am OK. I am now pretty confident that I will finish decently. But I also swear "I will never do this again". People are dropping like flies around me. I had read about this beforehand, but I am still surprised by the extent of it. It is motivating and demotivating at the same time. What if something suddenly happens to me, too?

35-40 km: It is now a struggle to keep the pace as close to 6 as possible: I drop to 6:20s 6:30s. I am amazed that it is not possible to go faster when my heart rate is so low. I want to push it to above 160, but my legs won't let me. I have never raced with so pleasant HR before. Did I start too easy? Too hard? Or perhaps just perfect, and this is simply unavoidable with respect to my amount of training? "Negative split, my ass" I am thinking now. What was that pace calculator making me believe? Every time I try to push a little harder, there is something that feels like the start of something that can stop me completely, so I rather concentrate on keeping things under control. It is pretty tough now. I had imagined that I would be so happy at 36 km, just 6 left. But the feeling at this point is far from happiness. People are screaming "Bravo", "You are a hero", etc. I can hardly concentrate. I hear my name being shouted several times. People are so nice, they read the names on the start numbers and shout them out. I was smiling to such things earlier in the race, but I have hard time smiling now.

40 km - finish: We are in the park. "Come on, less than the distance around Store Lungegårdsvannet is left now" I tell myself. I also remind myself that it was much more painful at the last kilometers of Oslo half marathon. Surprisingly there is a water station just 2 km before finish. Why not? I also drink there. People are stopping. So many people walking now. Some quitting. So close to the finish?? More spectators, more cheering. They want to give me a high five. I have no energy to respond. Then I see the "500 meters to finish" sign and to my surprise I start smiling really big. Almost laughing. I enter the stadium, it says "175 meters". Really? That long still?? Last meters are the longest but I am running whereas most people are walking, or rather limping. 50 meters left. My right hand folds to a fist and goes up in the air. Surprising, that, too. I pass the finish line with my right fist punching the air above my head. The watch says 4:17:18.

After finish: My friends and Frank have been waiting for me. So many hugs. My goodness I am so lucky. So many pictures. We get our medals. I want to lie down. Frank is in worse shape than me. He was struggling with serious cramps for the last 7 km. We lie down a bit and relax. Getting down to the ground is hard. Knees won't bend. Fortunately no injuries or no big pain anywhere for any of us. We all finish healthy. Our dedicated training pays off. I am so happy. I have no more to say. I am so happy.

Who knows? Maybe I will do it again after all ;-)

Marathon training IV : Taper time!

It's the best part of every race training!

Tapering is gradually decreasing the amount of training towards a race. The length of the taper period depends on the length of the race; the longer the race, the longer the taper. For a marathon, the proven formula seems to be 50% training the week before the race (day 14 - day 7) and very little training to full rest the week of the race (day 6 - day 0). The good thing is that it does not depend on how hard you have been training or at what level you are. The recipe of halving your training and then reducing it to almost zero seems to be the correct one for everybody.

Norwegian marathon queen Grete Waitz explained at several occasions that whenever she was injured or sick before a race, and thus forced to a complete rest, she performed better than ever. It was after such incidents that she set some of her most spectacular world records. Still, if she was not injured or sick, she found it impossible to take a full rest. This seems to be the case for most athletes. Although everybody knows that rest before a race is important, and there is no way to improve your form during the last two weeks, psychologically we are all afraid of losing form if we rest too much.

All books about training explain that the effect of a form-improving training comes after about two weeks. So during the last 14 days before a race, it is too late to train to get better. It is of course still good to have a few runs, even some intervals, so that the body does not "forget" the feeling of speed and endurance. However the most important thing before a race is to give the body and the legs enough rest, time to heal the small pains here and there, and a huge surplus of energy. After a hard training session, the body is broken down; it takes some days before things get repaired and the body adjusts itself to a higher level of training. This is the idea behind how hard exercise improves our form. Once the body is done with the repairing from the last exercise session and the adjusted improvement, it is ready for new exercise. If exercise does not come at that point, there come a few days of excess energy. The clue is to plan the race day to coincide exactly with the time of this excess energy.

Taper time practice should be either so light or so short that we have more energy after each exercise session than before. This way we build up energy towards the race. I have taken this literally. After a surprisingly easy 30 km last Sunday, my taper time started pretty hectic. It has been a busy week with 10 hour working days, and the planned training sessions simply did not work. On Tuesday we were supposed to have intervals, but I felt so exhausted that I simply had a super slow 11 km zone 1 session while Frank did his intervals. On Thursday, though, my body felt ready and eager, and I had a great interval session, which worked exactly by the book: more energy after the session than before. Yesterday, I was planning a shorter and lighter interval session, but it simply did not feel right. After the unusually exhausting week, I felt like resting and sleeping the whole day, and I did exactly that. Today, a run of 15-16 km is planned, the speed depending on the feeling. And then I plan my last run before the race to be on Tuesday.

I know many of my friends will be running closer to the race, but my experience with my own body is that a lot of rest helps me during a race. Last year at the Stoltzekleiven race, the four full days of complete rest before the race was exactly what helped me with a new BP. For Bergen City half marathon in 2014, I was forced to rest due to illness, and it gave me an extreme boost for the race. For Oslo half marathon in 2014, I trained too much and too close to the race, which cost me towards the end of the race. When Frank tried my advice for this year's Bergen City half marathon, he had a new PB. So, next week I will try to go home from work at normal hours, relax on the couch, eat my carbs, go to bed early, sleep as much as I can, stretch lightly, and try to convince Frank to give me a few leg massages.

The feeling that there is actually nothing more I can do is quite elevating.

Marathon training III : Keeping up the motivation until the end

Through pain and frustration. Through rain and wind...

Thursday evening Frank and I went for a 14 km tempo run. There was a storm outside. We waited as long as we could for the rain to stop, but it simply got worse and worse, and in the end we just went. We got really soaked, the wind was against us no matter which direction we ran, and despite the high effort, we were pretty cold the whole time.

What gives the motivation to go ahead with such a session? For me, it was the fact that I had not run the day before, and practice for the rest of the week was tightly scheduled due to work and family obligations. So if I skipped that run, there would be no chance to do it another day and I would loose one more practice before Amsterdam. These days I am loosing a lot practices compared to my program already, so I simply could not afford to miss that run.

I cannot train as much as would like to, as various parts of my body (yes, there are more now than just the hamstrings) let me know very clearly when they advise me to skip a day of running. And having learned the hard way, I do listen to these body parts, and take it easy when things start acting up. I try to calm them down with ice and compression, and after a day or two, I try to catch up with the training when they let me.

It is quite demotivating be unable to train to be at your best. On the other hand, perhaps my body can never take marathon training more than this level, and in that sense this is as good as I can get. Although my lungs and muscles would have managed more, my tendons are holding back. From time to time, I do really want to give up the whole idea of running a marathon. It happens that I am so worried about possible injuries and lacking performance that  I have trouble sleeping at night, which again affects training performance. Doing bad at training adds to the stress about the race, and it all becomes a vicious cycle....

But then comes a good practice where I feel fast and strong, and it wipes away all the frustration, and I feel wonderful again. So, how do I manage to pull myself up and get going again so that the good practice actually happens? I don't know, to be honest. I think it is a bit like how I motivate myself to finish a long run. Just think one small portion at a time, concentrate on the next task, adjust myself to the situation, and go on as best as I can.

Because this is exactly how it is during a long run. Some friends ask me how it is possible to do these long runs of 30 km or more once a week. I must admit I find it hard. The first time I had a run that was longer than a half marathon was in Istanbul in June. I ran 24 km all alone. It was hot, but I had planned the whole thing very carefully in my head. I would reward myself at some milestones. I knew that there was a gas station at 6 km and at 12 km, so I promised myself to stop and have a cold drink at 6, 12, and 18 km, as well as a big breakfast at the end. Then, during the run, I only needed to concentrate and motivate myself until the next stop. It worked pretty well, and since then I applied it to all the longer and longer runs.

Of course running with a group of friends helps a lot. But my friends whom I am training for the marathon with are all faster than me, and although Frank always runs back and forth to never leave me all alone, I end up running half the distance by myself. (Which is good practice actually, as I will be on my own during the race as well.)  So I still look forward to the stops. There are always three stops: after 1/4 of the distance, then at half, and then at 3/4. I only think until the next stop and try to ignore rest of the distance. Before every stop I feel exhausted, but after taking a gel and some water I am good to go for another round. I hope this will help me during the race itself as well. I will try to concentrate on one water station at a time.

Sometimes I wonder whether I started to prepare this training a little too early. Who knows? Just a month ago, I was painfree and feeling wonderful and excited about the race and about my performance possibilities. So if I had started my marathon training a month later than I did, perhaps I would be at my best now? We cannot know. Some of my much faster and more experienced friends got injured during taper time just before a race, after completing a their training program successfully. Whereas others are training hard, getting better, and having a great time looking forward to the next race. There is no correct answer that fits all. The most important thing is to not compare oneself with others.

Although it is a race, it is not a competition with anyone else than myself.

Marathon training II : Improving form and avoiding injury

It is a delicate and frustrating balance...

The ultimate paradox of running and other endurance training is that as one's form improves, the danger of getting injured increases. Just when everything was going better than ever, I started to feel pain in my hamstrings again, and this week I had to back off from running. On the positive side, it has been a week of unusually nice and warm weather, so I could enjoy hiking and just relaxing in the sun, in addition to strength training and swimming. But the fear that the pain might not go away is extremely disturbing.

It is so typical! As our form improves, we are able to endure more and more training, but as the distance and intensity increase, so does the danger of injuries. Muscles can endure a lot, the lung capacity gets better and better, but the joints and the tendons are fragile, especially the older we are. I mentioned it once in an earlier blog entry, but I want to share it again: the story of Tom Goom, who is a physiotherapist in addition to being an experienced marathoner. It is a textbook example of what NOT to do.

First things first: maybe I focused too much on the negative sides of marathon training last week. There is a lot of satisfaction and feeling of achievement involved with following such a program and seeing the results. When I came back from holidays, it took me about two weeks to get to the speed that should correspond to my training level. I had been running quite a bit slower during the hot summer in Turkey, and coming back to the cool summer of Norway did not give the immediate speed effect that I was expecting. Just three days after coming back, I did my worst 5k race ever. Two weeks after that, I did one of my best 10k races. A week later, I had a 20k tempo run which was considerably faster than my planned marathon pace, and it went all nice and easy. In addition to all this, the real long runs, 30k or more, which felt really painful in the beginning, started to feel much easier and go faster and faster.

So everything was going just perfect. In the first few weeks after coming home and starting to follow the marathon training program more conscientiously, I was often quite exhausted, and could only do four of the five planned running sessions. As my form improved, though, I was able to endure more training, and I started to do all five running sessions of the week. I felt better and better; both form-wise and with respect to how little tired I was.

I have been all the time taking extra caution with respect to injuries, doing my leg strength and HSR training exercises regularly, and taking a lot of dietary supplements to stay healthy and keep strong tendons. I am a bit embarrassed to share the following picture, but this is in fact what I take every morning, hoping that they will keep me away from injuries. I am not sure whether they are of help, but I am pretty convinced that at least they don't hurt.

But in the end, although I've been cautious and listening to my body,  you see that things may still go wrong. Hopefully not terribly wrong... At least there is no acute injury that happened during a run. I had a nice 34 k run last Sunday. I rested on Monday. I had leg strength training Tuesday morning, and a zone 1 15 k run Tuesday evening.  In fact the 15 k was supposed to be 19 k, 13 of which would go in marathon pace, but I felt like taking it easy. So far so good. But Wednesday morning I woke up feeling pain in both upper hamstrings tendons. I was really in doubt about what to do. I had planned to participate in a 10 k race on Thursday, but I canceled it to be on the safe side, and went for an easy hike instead. That turned extremely spectacular and gave me the chance to catch up with friends I had not seen in a while. So there has been no running since Tuesday, which is perhaps a good rest for my legs in any case. Today I hope that I am ready to run again.

Fingers crossed. Only four weeks now...