micke-midlife on April 27th, 2009

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… aim for the unreachable, get as close as you can. The definition of art by Markus Lüpertz, the director of the Kunstakademie (art academy) Düsseldorf is the motto of 400days.
After the race in Rotterdam, the view gradually shifts towards the fall and the main marathon in Berlin. The question has [...]

Continue reading about Marathon running is a form of art…

When travelling to a marathon abroad with the primary supporter wifey (aka the queen), at arrival at the race location priorities may slightly diverge.
Arrival at Amsterdam Schiphol airport, the queen goes “oh look at all those variations of stroopwaffles in the shops here, shouldn’t we buy some?” The runner goes “the food on the flight [...]

Continue reading about Countdown to Rotterdam - 2 and 1: Arrival at the race location

micke-midlife on April 2nd, 2009

More than two and half thousand kilometers behind in preparation, reduced the weight by 8-9 kg, went through the worst part of a Saltin carbo loading diet, bought new race shoes and tested those, coincidence on the race day is not quite what we’re after here. Flight to Rotterdam is tomorrow, arrival there on Friday, [...]

Continue reading about Countdown to Rotterdam - 3: Packing for success

micke-midlife on April 1st, 2009

the Saltin Diet is quite a torture, well can you call it torture if you do it voluntarily to yourself? Anyway, 3 days of no carbs means at breakfast yoghurt with vegetables and milk, at lunch meat or fish with salad, after lunch still feeling cold in the hands since blood pressure is down and [...]

Continue reading about Countdown to Rotterdam - 4: it’s carb loading time!

micke-midlife on March 30th, 2009

6 days to go. 9 kilos down since August last year. After today’s training session the scales only showed 72.1kg anymore. The Saltin diet shows it’s effect. Lost about 1.5 kilos in 3 days. I expect to go down another 0.5 to 1kg, but that’ll be it for Rotterdam. For Berlin in the fall, we [...]

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micke-midlife on March 29th, 2009

7 days to go. It’s Saltin diet time. The Saltin diet is an extrem form of carboloading and got it’s name from the Swedish professor in physiology Bengt Saltin, MD, who developed this method in the late 60’s and 70’s. He’s nowadays the director of the Copenhagen Muscle Research Centre. Asking five people, you get [...]

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micke-midlife on March 28th, 2009

8 days to go. The first weather forecast predictions provide indications for the Rotterdam weather on the race day, April 5th. It looks good, way too good. Let’s monitor it at weather.com
With officially 13 degrees Celsius, we’d have 16 - 18 degrees in the sun. This is best marathon weather one could think of. It’ll [...]

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micke-midlife on March 27th, 2009

9 days to go. Was running with the racing shoes today that arrived yesterday. Good feeling. Tried to go hard and pushed the pace to 3:45 min/km several times. It’s tough, it feels like a distant wish to go that pace the whole marathon distance. But of course it’s -4 degrees out there right now, [...]

Continue reading about Countdown to Rotterdam - 9

micke-midlife on March 26th, 2009

It was almost a bit like Christmas today, well more like the second day of Christmas - boxing day. Not that I would have put things back into boxes. But rather boxes with running shoes have arrived. One pair of GnL shoes, they’re  special, a review will follow still this week. And then the racing [...]

Continue reading about Countdown to Rotterdam - 10