Today I came across something cool. Was out on a shorter run because all the snow that has come down in the last 3-4 days makes running really difficult. The ground is uneven, the snow is soft. The feet stumble forward more than anything. Well, it trains all the small muscles in the feet that look after stabilizing, but if you’re into running with a good stride and rythm, you might get close to desperation right now.
Somewhere along the railway tracks close to the Oulunkylä station I came across this open door into the ground. It remined quite a bit about the place in the movie “Cyclomania“, where the main characters discover the fun of interval training. So, this was sufficiently interesting to be checked out. When entering the opening suddenly the ventilation and lights went on. Didn’t first grasp it, what happened since Rammstein was blasting “Pussy” in my ears. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: underground, uphill training
Met Ari Monday this week while he was running bare footed on the 400m track at the Esport Arena. First thought, did he read the book “Born to Run”? Did he perhaps read the review of it? (The book praises barefoot running as a cure to a majority of physical inhibitors to running.) Well, as it turned out, no and no. But still he saw me doing it the week earlier and thought that must be a good idea. Great when people think that stuff I do is a good idea. The little princess does this as well when I do stomach workouts or lick the desert bowl - the latter to some not quite approving looks from the other family member.
So Ari also runs barefooted and I joined up with him. After a couple of laps we agreed that we should also run some good intervals together. That seems a better alternative than torturing ourselves individually, hence we said to meet up this Friday to do a couple of 1000m runs. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Ari H., meeting people, sub
training notes, damn cold, damn fast, 18.6km in 1:16h
Tried to see whether you can run fast while it’s winter, quite cold (-17 degrees Celsius) and all white. Yes you can. The difficulty is to stick to a rythm. The snow surface below the feet is in not even and evenly firm. There are a lot of stabilization moves, your foot has to perform. Sliding to the sides, slipping back, sinking in. When running at a faster pace you want to keep an upright running posture and the upper body shouldn’t move left or right. That doesn’t quite work as well when you run on snow. I guess it wouldn’t be possible (for me) to do a 10k race in 35mins (3:30min/km on average), but an 18k training run in 4:05 min/km was ok.
Tags: winter training
Tags: winter training
Tags: princess
The 13,5km or the 18,5km route? That was the question. When digging out the car out of the snow and ice at the airport car park last night at 11pm with -20 degrees outside - the fingers and toes freezing, cause the shoes and gloves that worked in Germany didn’t work in Finland - I opted in my mind for the shorter route. Today with the sun out and considerably warmer (-15 degrees) weather, it felt alright to go for the longer one. The snow crunching below the soles of the trail running shoes, the sweat turing to ice on the surface of the active wear running clothing. Below the BH-504 headset whole layers of ice formed gradually an icicle. I was hoping the headset won’t give up with all the sweat and ice under the hat, Rammstein provided a good beat. Fortunately it didn’t. Will be interesting to see how long it’ll last.
With all the calm surroundings, the snow nicely damping all noises, except of the Rammstein tune of course, it’s easy to let the thoughts go their own route. Already a while I was wondering, training in rather flat terrain on sea level, is there an inbuilt constraint to how good you can get? Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: winter pictures
Hamburg Marathon it is, on April 25. The decision formed itself a while ago I guess. As pretty much decisions should be done. First you think of a number of criteria along which the decision should be made, then you find data to this criteria, evaluate it, make a pre-selection. Then comes the most important part: let the thinking mature a bit. Does new criteria come up? Is there new information that changes the game? Do reflections with other people bring new insights? If not, then just make the bloody call.
The criteria were that the run should be during spring time, the later the better. Every day later gives me one more day to run in better weather conditions (less snow & ice on streets, more light while being out there). Further, the course had to be flat and the starter field big enough to have other people running the same pace and a good audience standing on the sides. The evaluation was thorough. The pre-selection hinted to the Hamburg Marathon all the way. No new criteria came up, this project needs a dignified ending, so all for that. Game changers didn’t came up so far. There’s a bit of a dark horse called change of job location, but that’s not yet really seen on the horizon yet. When talking about the Hamburg Marathon, some point out the damn 2km ascent at the end of the race. Well, one needs a challenge at that point.
All in all, the time was ripe to do the registration today. And anyway, it’s the last day of registration to a guaranteed place in the starter field…
Tags: hamburg marathon
training notes, last week of the year
86km so far, last day tomorrow, in total going beyond 100km, goooood
The fartlek three days ago sucked big time, wasn’t able to keep up a same pace over 1,5km that should be run over the whole marathon distance in roughly 16 weeks… there’s an equation that needs some hard thinking - or better running. A German saying goes like this “was man nicht im Kopf hat, hat man besser in den Beinen” (= if you can’t think through things properly, you better have good stamina in carrying things out). Well, here I’d just go for the stamina, that would suit me fine.
A week back with the old crowd again. Well, the only one old in this group is me. The young stars, Stefano who specialized this year on 2:31h marathons (Rotterdam and Berlin) and Hannes the 5000m rocket (14:20min or so), put on a tough program for this week. It should go beyond 100km and include athletic circuit training indoors, too. Let’s see how my old bones and muscles are keeping up.
The interesting thing is that an age difference of 10 or 11 years shouldn’t be severe at all. Just read in the book “Born to Run” something on a study made on New York Marathon results. If marathon runners start from the age of 19 or 20 years old. They build up their form over on average 8-9 years and peak at somewhere between 27 and 29 years of age. Guess, at what age they have deteriorated that much that they reach the same level of results that they had at age 19/20?
It’s surprisingly far out. Apparently at 64 or 65. It would be interesting to understand more on this study, but before over analysing it, it sounds good to me. Let’s give those young guys a run for their money 
Tags: younger generation
I don’t read a lot, I’m not a book worm. Mostly it’s due to a lack of time and patience. Although I always enjoy a good read. If one asks whether a book’s good that let’s you fall asleep quickly at night (and you’re refreshed and feel good next morning) or a book is good because you can’t put it away and hence it won’t let you fall asleep. With all the consequences involved, I’m all for the latter. This one was doing a good job at it, it’s a good book. Pekka K. who joined a couple of runs earlier in Nov and Dec recommended it and handed me his copy, he got from the Helsinki city libraby. It wasn’t problem to get through it still during the standard borrowing time of 30 days, for both Pekka first and me afterwards. (Or was it Pekka?)
But with all this kudos upfront, let’s get to the book now. Born to Run is about long distance running and actually more ultra distances than standard marathons, about ancient native American tribes who keep up running as part of their culture, about barefoot running, about protagonists in the US ultra-distance running scene, about an ultimate race in the Mexican Copper Canyons and about the minor aspect that running made mankind to it has become and it still makes us better people. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: book, born to run
