Read, run, race

“I read a book and it changed my life.”

This is the opening sentence in a novel by Orhan Pamuk; and it is one of my favorite starts of a book. Recently, I've had a similar experience myself. I read a book and it changed my life. Well, not quite. But it has made me look at my life with new eyes. I have just read a book about running, and it has been like talking to a good friend with almost exactly the same experiences as myself when it comes to the topics that I am writing about in this blog.

The book is “What I talk about when I talk about running” by Haruki Murakami, several of whose books I had read before, although none of them made the same impression. I knew that, in addition to being a world famous author, he is also a pretty decent runner, but I did not know about this book, which is already from 2007. It was brought to my attention by the excellent literature blog of Tine, and the way she described the book was so appealing to me that I bought an electronic version immediately, and I started reading it right away.

It turns out that Murakami has taken a lot of notes when preparing for and right after his many competitions and other running experiences, and he then revised them and put them together in a book, almost like a novel. Why did the book speak to me so well? I think first of all it is because I recognized so well so many of the things I have experienced myself. And secondly, I learned so much from the experiences of Murakami, who has run many full marathons.

During the years when I was struggling with my weight, I had the bad habit of falling into negative thoughts, like how unfair it is that I put on weight so easily while others can eat as much as they like and stay thin. When I finally managed to do something about my weight and got into better training habits, it was partly because I managed to turn these unfair things into positive thoughts. “Just imagine that you are allergic. Allergic to sugar, fat, and too much carbs”. “If I were thin, I would never start running, exercising or eating healthy. So in a sense I am lucky that my metabolism forces me to be fit and healthy.” It turns out that Murakami had exactly the same experiences and exactly the same thoughts!

In addition to many marathons, Murakami has also done several triathlons. Incredibly enough, also his thoughts and experiences about various parts of a triathlon are exactly the same as mine. We have for example in common our uneasiness about biking. The speed in many places is only dependent on how unafraid you are and not how strong, which we both find demotivating. It turns out that he has also had the same experiences as I have had in the start of the swimming part of a triathlon. How people push, even kick, each other. This is something I will never understand, and it was such a relief to read Murakami's sentiments that were exactly the same as mine.

What really appeals to me in Murakami's book is that he is simply writing about his own experiences, and he is not trying to give advice or teach. This is also what I am striving for in my blog. Not tell others what to do; simply tell what I am doing. Perhaps recommend a few things that I have tried and liked. Like this book...

If you are a runner I think you will like it!

The days are just packed

It is quite unbelievable that I've only been in Istanbul a little more than a week. It already feels like much longer, and I feel quite settled and "local". The most interesting is perhaps that some of my new running buddies already feel like old friends considering the level of trust and affection I sense in our relationship. I wonder how things would have been if I had not found and contacted Team Istrunbul. Of course I am very lucky to move to a place where I already have a lot of close friends and family, but come to think of it, I see my running buddies much more often than I can meet with my old friends and family. It was the same also in Bergen, and I am grateful for the experience and confidence that I got from Melksyre and Fjellgeitene, which I think enabled me to get in touch with Istrunbul so quickly. This weekend Frank is visiting, and also he joined the group and enjoyed very much the social running, and not the least the super cozy coffee gathering afterwards.

Let me give a brief summary of how the three most important things related to this blog are going at the end of the first week.

Running
Well, as you can conclude from the above, it is going wonderfully well. I am so pain-free that I cannot believe it myself. I try to understand the reason, but I have no clue. Is it that my body actually prefers asphalt running to uphills and terrain? No matter the reason, I am regaining speed more quickly than I could have hoped for. In Bergen, I felt that I was stuck in slow running, and now suddenly everything seems to have opened up. Perhaps it is all in the mind, and a physical change of environment gave the necessary change of mind and inner motivation to run faster. I am now working on increasing my weekly mileage.

Eating
This is a big issue, and considering my goal of losing a few kilos this year, I am in the wrong place. This country offers (arguably) the best food in the whole world. And it is so easily accessible; my neighborhood is packed with restaurants of all sorts, and home delivery of whatever you might wish is only a phone call away. As long as I am alone, though, I have been behaving really well.  For breakfast, cereal or oatmeal, just like at home in Bergen. For lunch, my work offers a large variety of hot dishes everyday for a very reasonable price, and there are several different vegetable dishes and salads, and lean meats in the menu every day. I have been strong enough to stay away from bread and deserts, and I am very content with how the lunches are working so far. For dinner, I usually just make a salad or a quick wok, and also try to stay away from bread/pasta/potatoes there. Of course, my wonderful regime has fallen apart very badly now that Frank is visiting, and there is no limit to the variety of things we have been eating and drinking. I am taking this as an opportunity to just taste once the things that I have missed so much (mezes, kebaps, deserts, boza, sahlep, ...), and afterwards I hope I will continue to be able to keep away from them.

Strength training
I have started Pilates! I liked it immediately, and everything my Pilates trainer told me already at the first lesson made perfect sense to me. First of all, it is serious strength training, and as I asked to be pushed hard, things got pretty tough. The idea of Pilates, though, is that there is a balance between strength training and extensive stretching. And the stretching part in particular I think will do me well. (Just look at the picture above; how stiff I am!) As I had noticed myself already, and my Pilates trainer saw immediately as he studied my posture, I am very strong (and too tight) in the muscles on the front side of my body but not as strong in the ones on the back side. So now we will try to balance the strength, which means for example extensive stretching of my chest muscles, and perhaps losing a bit strength there. This is very hard for me of course, agreeing to lose a bit strength at some places, but I am willing to give it a try. In the end, if things don't work out, I'll simply let Ketil fix me up after going back to Bergen. :-) Joking aside, I do truly believe that I can get stronger and more flexible during these six months. The type of Pilates I will be doing has several interesting "machines" to do it on, which mainly give instability in many different ways so that you have to use your own strength to stabilize your body. I am sure there will be reports with pretty funny pictures in the sequel.

Stay strong and balanced.

First things first: IstRUNbul

Sometimes sticking to your plan pays off even better than expected... 

I arrived in Istanbul Friday evening, and already Saturday morning I was running with Team IstRUNbul. It does not sound so overwhelming at first, and it was exactly as I had planned and was looking forward to before leaving. But I had perhaps not taken into proper consideration that this is not just a week's stay; this is actually moving. Typically, you enter the apartment and immediately discover things that need to be fixed. Even if you plan to be in bed early (because of the early run the morning after), you end up taking care of a lot of things and being very late. And then you don't really get a good night's sleep because you're thinking of all the things that need to be done the day after, which you still haven't figured out how. So perhaps the most natural, and even sensible, thing would be to cancel the Saturday morning run, and rather wait for the next one (Tuesday morning).

But boy am I glad that I was out there yesterday; early bird really gets the worm! First of all, one less thing to think about. Getting quickly into a running routine and meeting the new group was a big issue for me, taking quite a bit of space in my mind, and now it's done. And it was great fun and very rewarding! Secondly, everything seems better and easier after a run, and I was full of energy for all the other things that needed to be taken care of yesterday. And finally, I get to keep the rhythm of running without falling out of it again. Once you think you should wait until you have taken care of all the practical things, the break can get longer than first intended.

The one member of the group whom I knew, could not run yesterday, so I was on my own. At first I was thinking that this was unfortunate, but now I think it was perhaps a blessing in disguise.  I immediately connected with a couple of  group members and ended up running and chatting with them all the way. I was pretty nervous when I went to the meeting point, though. What if nobody showed up? What if they were too fast for me? Fortunately, as it seems to be the case with all running groups, everybody was friendly and welcoming, and after the start the group naturally divided into different paces. The people I ended up running next to are extremely nice, and it turned out that with one of them we have very similar goals for this year.  She has already run a full marathon, and she is a bit more experienced than me, so I have a lot to learn from her. Luckily for me, our paces for various zones seem to be similar, and we are now planning to work together towards our goals.

This morning she and I went for a new run, a bit longer than yesterday, all by ourselves. The sun came out as soon as we started, and it hid behind the clouds as soon as we were done and sat down to have our coffee. As I was back at home, it started raining. Could we have been more lucky? I think this is promising very well. I am also a bit surprised by how well my body works. No pain, just wonderful running feeling which I had missed so much and have not been able to experience since March 2015. Could it be the temperature? Perhaps running in the cold makes things worse for injured body parts, and at more pleasant temperatures it is easier to keep the muscles warm and happy? I am not sure, but whatever it is, it is working, and I am very happy and optimistic.

Today I met even a few more group members, and an idea for Runatolia (half) marathon in Antalya in March came up... Sounds really fun, but I'm not sure.  It's not among the goals and the hopes of this year, but we'll see.

"Life is like a box of chocolate; you never know what you're gonna get." (Forrest Gump's mom)

Moving to a new place (without falling behind on training)

If you change nothing, nothing will change...

I'm moving to Istanbul for half a year. It's nothing dramatic; just an opportunity that I got in connection with my work, and I grabbed it since it will offer reunion with my friends and family there, in addition to exciting work challenges.

When you go on holiday or when you go for a work stay of shorter period, there is no need to make big plans for training. Some running opportunity will always be there, and in the worst case, taking it easy for a couple of weeks might actually even be beneficial for your form. But when you're moving to a new place where you will stay for a longer time, and you will be living alone most of the time, some more serious preparations might be in order. At least this is how I felt as the time of my departure started to approach.

I'm really lucky. The location of the university where I will be working is really great. It is situated on a hill by the Bosphorus strait, and I have rented an apartment just below the hill, by the seaside, at walking distance from work. The seaside along Bosphorus is many kilometers long, with wide pavements, and it offers great opportunities for running and walking, with many people using it for this purpose, as well as recreational fishermen. And the hill from where I will live to where I will work can be quite perfect for some uphill intervals during the weekends, as well as providing a pleasant heartbeat increase on the way to work every morning.

Although everything sounds great, I still felt the need to find training buddies, since I now know how beneficial and how much fun it is to train with others. This is where Facebook comes extremely handy. Although it is much scolded at from time to time, thanks to this fantastic tool, I knew exactly which of my old friends were into running and training. As a wonderful surprise it turned out that one of my friends is in a running group that has three weekly running sessions, starting literally just outside of my front door! The drawback is that they run 6 am in the morning.... they run for an hour until 7, and then there is coffee at a café nearby from 7 to 7:30 (No hard work without a pleasant reward afterwards for Istanbul people; they really know how to enjoy life), before everyone goes home to shower and then off to work. On the positive side, my working hours will be so flexible that I think I might take a nap after showering and before going to work. Here is a picture from that exact same café, taken a few years back when I was there again for work. (No, I'm not sponsored by the brand :-)

So the running part is under control. I am so excited to hopefully be able to join the first practice there already on Saturday (even on Saturdays it's 6 am...) But what about strength training? I don't want to let my muscles down, and I know by experience that strength training on my own at home might not work too well. Another friend of mine is into serious Pilates, which looks both really impressive and a lot of fun. So I also made plans to join this Pilates club, and go there at least a couple of times a week, to keep and hopefully even increase my strength. In addition, the university has sports facilities that include a swimming pool, a training hall with machines, and an athletic field, which staff can use at a very reasonable price. I want to continue with my HSR exercises at least once a week, so I will check out whether the appropriate machines are present. If not, I might sign up at a regular gym which has them. I have been doing these exercises every second day since my injury relapsed, and now it is almost gone again. These exercises work miracles, I'm telling you.

As a preparation for my Istanbul stay and my goals/hopes for 2016, I have cut down on uphill running on smooth ground. Uphill fast walking, climbing or running on terrain works fine, and this has been very helpful for recovering from the relapse, but excessive uphill running on asphalt or gravel seems to trigger my injury.  Now I am concentrating basically on forward movement, with hour-long sweet spot runs and two-hour-long slower runs. The plan is to have three of the first and at least one of the last every week. Initially I will not run more often than every other day, but I hope I can increase if everything goes well. The intention is that the distance (hence speed) will eventually increase under these conditions, with the same heart rate and the same duration. At least this is the plan. We will see if my legs will let me see it through. Fingers crossed!!

"If you fail to plan, you're planning to fail." (Benjamin Franklin)