12/16/2012

Snow, wind and 40k

Today was total fun. About 3.5 weeks ago I wasn't even able to run, but today I had the most fun (really snowy pretty windy, but fun) Birthday 40k with Juha, Ami, Matti, Ilkka, Pasi, Jussi, Z, Janica, Antti-Pekka, Kari, Mika, Mikko, Arttu and a nice get-together with many others. Thank you everyone!!!

 I feel like I'm only 39.


12/12/2012

Workout Wednesday

Finnish December is bit different than e.g. in the US. Our days and some of the evenings are fulfilled with xmas related festivities (with friends, colleagues), mostly eating. For instance, I ate way too much today, but luckily I had a decent workout already under my belt.

Due to snowy and slippery road conditions your choices for running fast are limited. For me to usual choice has been a treadmill since it sort of amplifies the running related pain. Fortunately, this not that only option. We live so close to the indoor track that I have to run an extra loop in order to get enough long warm-up.

So today I was ready for 8*500m'200m already at 7:01AM (the facilities open at 7:00) and of course I was the only one there. Nice. The pace varied from 5:15 to 4:50 (@mile) and that's the fastest pace that I have run in years.

But today's craziest news is that Jarmo Hast, a Finnish triathlete, swam 26.2 miles (in a pool) in 11 hrs 44 minutes. Insane. 6 hrs of aqua jogging is nothing.

12/04/2012

Instant payback

Since Wednesday's workout went so well, I kinda lost it. Again.

On Thursday I found a route that provided tailwind for 6.2 miles. So I flew fast instead of running easy. Fortunately, achilles was still silent.

On Friday I was invited to run a little faster 5km indoors. Since the indoor track has tilted curves, the prognosis for "there there" status of my right achilles had bad news written all over it. But I had so eagerly waited for getting back at it and I didn't want to pay attention...

The outcome was that Saturday's easy run was easy basically due to the severe pain in achilles and in the calf. When I returned from this sad run, I did all I could to make the pain go away. And that really worked! On Sunday's long run I didn't feel a thing.

Yesterday I realized how tough I once was. I ran WU+6km Tempo+CD in 6F weather. And based on how I felt afterwards, I think that it was the maximum. I vaguely remember that I rolled 6-9 miles much faster in much colder conditions. But now is now and on Friday I'm 40.