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)