The heat is on

"Be careful what you wish for, 'cause you just might get it." (Eminem)

Istanbul has been really hot the past week. You might remember that I complained about the cold weather in Norway in some posts, and bragged about how pleasant the temperatures early in the morning in Istanbul are. In fact, even though spring started to turn into summer, early mornings kept cool, breezy, and pleasant. Two weeks ago I was running in the forest and it was 10 degrees C when we started at 6 am. But then everything changed suddenly. Yesterday the same spot at the same hour was 20 degrees...

Running along the sea on our usual IstRUNbul early route has required a lot more sweat this week than earlier, and longer weekend runs that continue until 8 or 9 am have started to feel like running in the desert. OK, I am exaggerating, but the weather got very quickly very hot. Much hotter than what is normal for June. On the positive side, the weather is preparing me for the south of Turkey, which is much warmer, where I am headed in a little more than a week. Another positive effect of too hot compared to too warm is that the muscles, joints, and tendons are warm and soft and relaxed and no such part complains about pain or injuries.

But effort-wise it is a lot tougher to run fast in the heat than in the cold. I already experienced a tough hot run during the mountain marathon in Bergen a few weeks ago, and I am now certain that when it comes to how fast you can run and how much you can push yourself, too cold, though not ideal, is better than too hot. I am running quite a bit slower now, in fact most of my friends are. All advice about running in hot weather says that you should not care about the speed, but rather watch your heart rate. Sometimes some of us get dizzy or a too high heart rate and start walking. My body has adjusted quickly and nowadays starts sweating already in the beginning of the run. In the end, all my clothes are completely drenched. Sweating is good; it means that the body is able to adjust and cool down, but it feels unpleasant. Everything becomes slippery, and gear starts gliding and sliding, resulting in sores at the usual places. I have stopped using the heart rate monitor; it is after all bikini season and I do not want too many blemishes all over my body.

I have started to take precautions against the loss of body liquid and salts during training. I am taking some supplements containing a blend of minerals that one looses when one sweats a lot. I have the impression that it works; I feel a lot less tired. After a run, instead of drinking plain water I drink mineral water. I also drink a lot more mineral water than usual also throughout the day. And of course I try to drink much more water than usual in general.

It is interesting how the weather of where we live affects our training for races. In Turkey, most runners prefer the spring races because they are able to train for them throughout the winter in pleasant temperatures though it might rain and even snow every now and then. Preparing for races in the fall is a lot tougher because of the hot summer. In Norway it is the opposite. The pleasant temperatures of the summer, after the cold of winter and spring, give perfect conditions and enough time to prepare for the fall races. This year I will have a mixture of both. Preparing for the fall race in Amsterdam, I still have more than a month of Turkish hot summer, but then come two months of cool and pleasant Norwegian early fall.

In the meanwhile, I am really looking forward to the rain...

What are cramps and how to avoid them

Cramps be gone!

I wrote last week that I learned a lot from Bergen Fjellmaraton due to interesting new experiences, like cramps. In fact, I learned even more afterwards, thanks to many useful comments from friends upon publishing the post. And I got so intrigued by what cramps are and how to avoid or get rid of them, that I read a lot about them this week.

Interestingly there seems to be no common agreement among doctors, scientists and trainers about what actually causes cramps during a race. However, many athletes swear that they are helped by immediately taking tablets containing minerals, especially salt, when the cramps occur. When we sweat a lot, in addition to losing water we also lose a lot of salt. Water and salt are essential for the signals from the brain to reach the muscles. So, it seems to be an easy explanation that if you lose a lot of water and salt, cramps might happen.

And boy did I lose a lot of water and salt during that race! I drank about 2.5 liters during the race, and I kept drinking the whole evening. I even got up during the night twice and drank half a liter each time. Still, when I got on the scale the morning after, I was 3 kg lighter than I was on the morning of the day before. So I must have sweated like 6 liters during the race! Is that at all possible? It turns out that it is; under hot and strenuous conditions a person can sweat 2-3 liters per hour. Since the race lasted about 3 hours, the math adds up.

It seems to depend from person to person how much salt you lose when you sweat, and an easy test is to taste your sweat. If it is salty and you get a crust of salt on your face afterwards,  then you lose a lot of salt when you sweat. Exactly what happens to me! So I was happy to have found the answer. I simply lost too much water and salt. I was also extremely happy to have received advice from friends about the remedy: it turns out that there are a lot of tablets and mixtures you can take before and during a race to prevent cramps! You can even take them as soon as the cramps start coming, and they will go away, as several friends experienced during Bergen Fjellmaraton.

Still, I kept searching for more explanations. Some experts do not agree that loss of salt is the (single) explanation of muscle cramps during a race. A study on all athletes participating in an ultra-triathlon showed no significant differences in salt levels between athletes who experienced cramps and those who did not. This study concluded that muscle fatigue is the main reason for cramps. But how do you measure that? The problem about finding out what causes cramps is that they happen at a time when several things happen in the body simultaneously; muscles get tired, you lose water and salt, and even your brain gets tired. So it is not easy to know which of these things cause the cramps. For almost all athletes cramps seem to come during long races, and in the second half of such a race. This supports the muscle fatigue theory. I think common sense and my own experience, as well as most experts, suggest that it is a combination of both.

Recall that I had almost no terrain or mountain training in the months prior to the race. So my muscles were not prepared for that kind of race. All experts seem to agree that you should train in similar conditions of the race that you will participate in. What all experts also seem to agree on is the importance of plyometrics, or jump training, for runners. In Bergen I used to do quite a lot of jump training, both during my personal training sessions and also during our Monday sessions with Fjellgeitene, jumping a lot on stairs with both legs, single leg, several steps at a time, etc. I am definitely going back to this kind of training! To start preparing for my return to Norway, I have also taken up forest runs here in Istanbul.

And no matter how well I train and how prepared I might feel, I know what I will have in my pocket during Amsterdam Marathon: Crampfix!

Stay strong, stay hydrated, stay cramp-free.

Always look on the bright side: Bergen Fjellmaraton 2016

When the going gets tough, the tough gets going...

Bergen mountain half marathon.... when I participated in this race in 2014, I finished in 2 hours and 53 minutes, and I wrote that it was one of the best race experiences I'd ever had. Well, let me put it this way: the 2014 version of this race is still one of my best race experiences.... This year things turned out a little different.

This 21 km long evening race has a total elevation gain of 1080 meters; it is a spectacular course, starting from a spot very close to the center of town and ending in a spot even closer. But as soon as you start, and up until a kilometer before finish, you are in the wilderness and forget the city completely. The terrain is tough; there are no gravel roads or wide paths, except a few hundred meters at start and a couple of kilometers before finish. There are lot of stony parts, and you have to watch where you place your foot.

Frank, I and a few other friends had signed up for the early start at 18:30 this year. The regular start is at 20:00, but it is a lot of fun to reach the finish before the winners and cheer them on, so we like the early start. This year it turned out a bit unfortunate. On Thursday, the day of the race, the weather was really hot with no wind. When we were about to start, it was about 26 degrees. The first kilometer is the same as for the Ulriken race (short version), so I had that part freshly in mind. I kept an easy pace and my heart rate under control, and had a good feeling. The part from there until 2.5 km was really tough; this is where we gain about 400 meters of elevation. The sun was right on us with no wind, I was sweating a lot, and I had to work a lot with my brain to keep my spirit high. Many people around me stopped completely to get a break and recover a bit, especially the ones who had started out a bit too hard.

When I reached the 3 km point, the course flattened a bit, and I took my first energy gel and some drink. Very quickly afterwards I started feeling much better. I picked up pace, I felt that I regained control, and running felt fast and easy. To my surprise, I reached and passed many people who had passed me quite a while ago, and that gave a boost of energy and confidence. Until half way, everything went quite perfectly. I caught up and kept company with a couple of friends, and much sooner than I was expecting, we reached the single drink station at the Viking hut at 10.5 km. I stopped a little longer than my friends. Drank like a liter of water, and refilled my bottles.

Then with renewed energy I set out to catch my friends again. However, almost immediately I started to feel signs of cramps in my lower legs. We were going downhill, and I had to watch how I stretched my foot downward to keep the cramps away. When we reached the bottom of that hill, running flat for a while felt OK but I had to be careful. Then, on the even surface of the swings up to Rundemanen I did not feel the cramps at all. I managed to walk very fast, and I could see my friends just a little bit ahead of me, as I was steadily closing the gap between us. At this point, I thought the cramps were gone, and I had high hopes of being able to run fast on the downhills ahead and finishing around 2:50. Once I threw myself at the path that goes down from the top of Rundemanen, the cramps started coming back. This part is very uneven with small ups and downs, and going fast here became really painful. At some point, when the cramps started to creep all the way to my inner thighs, I wondered whether I should simply break the race. I did not want to get injured, and having never experienced such cramps before, I wondered whether they could be something else.

Things got a bit better when the surface got more even again as we reached the lower parts of Rundemanen and then Fløyen. However, the stride had to be short, the cadence low, and the movements very even, if I were to continue. My heart rate was low, I had a lot of power and energy, but moving the legs faster immediately ignited the cramps again. There and then I realized that I had no chance of beating my time of 2:53 with this pace. Still I tried to run as fast as the cramps allowed, but it was too slow, and when there were about 5 km to finish, I also lost the hope of sub 3:00. At that point I decided to stop pushing. I simply jogged the rest at easy pace and enjoyed the beautiful views. As a nice side effect, the 5-9 last km were like a post-race recovery run, and I was not at all exhausted when I reached finish. And after finish I had no cramps at all! Usually this is exactly when I start experiencing cramps.

My time ended up being 3:11. Wow! OK, I knew I was going slow, but still I was a bit shocked. 18 minutes worse than last time!? Almost a minute slower per km... Or considering where the cramps started, about 2 min slower per km for the last 9 km.... Well, well. I was surprised how it did not at all make me feel sad. It was, in a sense, not my fault. My form is good, I did everything right with respect to speed for the first half, but was completely taken aback by the cramps. Why did they come? Many people, who are not used to cramps, experienced them during this race, so perhaps it was due to the heat and dehydration? Did I drink too much at the drink station and change the liquid/salt balance too quickly? Or perhaps it was because my legs are not used to terrain for the last few months? Or a combination of all? In any case, I was just so happy to finish, so happy that my real injury did not at all bother me during the race, and so happy that one more of the hopes that I set at the beginning of the year came true.

Looking on the bright side, I learned a lot from this race and can benefit from it. I now know what cramps during a race are; they don't need to stop you, but slow you down. This was my first run that lasted for more than 3 hours, so it is perfect marathon training for Amsterdam. Since I went so slow at the end, I am not tired, and I won't need that long a rest before I can train again. Wanting to stop so many times, and still continuing despite the pain, was very good mental exercise. And for the first time ever after a race, I was not at all interested in checking the results! :-) As soon as we got home, the race was over in my head, and I very quickly moved on to thinking about completely different things.

To my consolation, even Frank went a bit slower this year than last, although he was still faster than most, and several friends who are fast marathon runners could not beat my time 2:53 from last time.

What does not kill you makes you stronger...