progress

As far as I can tell there's some progress. Speed is better, endurance is better. Recovery might not be as good as it should but it's simply due to lack of time to sleep. Usually I get up 4:45, let the dogs out than go on with the day. In the evening I tend to close activities around 21:00 so resting starts and lasts for barely 6 hours a day. Given the number of weekly trainings and the stress (the good kind:) it puts on the muscles I think there should be more of this. We'll see.

This week the 2nd complete cycle of 2+1 week training method started. Monday, with a nice good 8 km pace run and continued today with 8x400 m speed workout. Also, I started to pay much more attention to my stride as it was very much all over the place.
Now I try to keep my legs spinning as much as I can but I tend to run faster than my recovery pace on the treadmill. Also the "new" stride brings out some muscles and joints that were not pushed to their limits like this before. I do feel my calves much more and my achilles tends to firm up as well. I try to stretch as mush as I can to compensate and the rest days usually help getting over rid of the soreness.

The first hilly (still in the gym) workout is coming up. Today I tested how much is too much on the incline setting scale so I will not overdo the uphills. I like running up :)

Cycles

The current training plan is built around 2 week hard work (basically every second day) and a week of easy exercise. I just finished the hard part and started the easy runs today. This was the first, knowingly two week period. January started with basic what-can-i-still-do type of orientation that formed into the current actions.

The conclusion is: hard. Even though I felt very strong by the end of second week, with very surprising result in my bag, by Sunday I did feel the result of the seven workouts (none of them anywhere easy) in my legs. OK, the snow and the ice on the last 15 km long run did not help either. It was very difficult to avoid falling and breaking my arm or worse. But enormous strain on my back and on my brain as I was concentrating hard.

But due to all the effort I did get to know my boundaries better. I know now, that running 8x400 fast is not going to kill me. I know, that running 15 km can be very relaxing if done right. I know, that I can run faster and longer than I imagined.

So I am trying to figure out the next two hard weeks' plan. I do know, that I will run a half marathon distance (if weather permits) on the last run. I also start doing hill repeats as the first race in April will have quite some in it. And I would definitely improve my top speed as well.

It will be a fun two weeks. But first, off to recover and overcompensate...

Power of imagination

I forgot this: there are those moments when you just see what was going to happen. You're cutting bread and it just goes through your mind that "I could easily cut myself like this" and bam, there it is: bleeding finger.

On the path I run there are several steel ropes to stop the cars from entering the park area. There's one right at where I start so I made it an event to jump through it. It went well but then the second lap came, where I was (as it seems) too used to the jumping over so my body decided not to. This gave me a nice shin pain (and a wound to be discovered later) and some snow to swallow.

Weekly dose of trance*

Last week was just as good as it was planned to be. Had the perfect pace, attitude and recovery during the week. But then came the weekend.

By Friday morning my nose was running and my head wasn't as good as it should've been. But during the morning run everything cleared up. During the day it went back to worse again.
On Saturday unbelievable amount of snow fell down. This made me question the state of the running path for the Sunday long run. One good thing came out of this though: the clear air and the shoveling of the incredible piles of snow got rid of my cold once again. It was "only" bad when I was inside doing nothing.

So came Sunday. I decided to go and see what the conditions are. Temp: -4, no additional snow since Saturday. So far so good. Getting there was no fun as the roads were only partially cleared so had some trouble getting out of our village. The rest was easy.

Got there, change from warm coat to running coat, attached the gadgets and went down to the running path. It was clear! Excellent news. It took 3-5 mins for my nose to clear out. I did not feel the cold luckily, I was happy about my selection of layers.
Usually under these conditions only runners are on this path. Otherwise it would have been filled with families, dog walkers and bikers. This time of year is only for us. Met single runners, waved at each other. Then these two dudes came towards me. They looked out of context with their not-runner-like dresses and body movements. yet, to my biggest surprise they ran 3 laps while I was doing my two! The second time we met, I thought that these are other people. They must be unless they ran across the lake. But they weren't joking. We met four times in total! I was totally amazed.
I went on the my final 3 km of the total 15 after my last sighting of the two wonders.

Overall it went well. Slower than two weeks ago but there was no snow before and I wasn't weakened by the cold I have now either. Not excuses though, I did good to my standards.

Sum: 15 km in 1 hour 26 mins, easy pace.

*after Armin Van Buuren