…well, what is the next logical marathon after Paris and Hamburg? Any thoughts? Essex of course! Halstead & Essex to be precise. Just one hour car journey from where I live. And a good old friend will drive me. What more can you ask for. The race is on the 12th of May, relatively small and has a very beautiful course through the finest English countryside. Runnersworld apparently voted it 4th best marathon in UK. Woohoo. But would I need…
Here a picture from Hamburg Fernsehturm were it all began and ended. It ended rather well. Just a few seconds after I crossed the finish line I got a text from the organisers giving me my official time. It’s 3:54:35 – yeah! The run itself was rather hard though, at k15 I already had enough, at k21 I couldn’t see how I possibly can run the same distance again. But then I did it somehow. Really strange experience and it…
The start line is the finish line and the marathon itself is somewhere in between. A bit like life. Hamburg is my 6th marathon and you would think one gets used to it. But I haven’t yet. Still very nervous and still half an hour to go. Track me on Runkeeper!
Not sure when the thought of doing 12 marathons this year first entered my mind. Maybe when I worked out my plans for preparing for ultramarathons. This whole thing about stepping up 10% in distance each month. I noticed that rather soon I had to do marathon distances as training runs if I am serious about getting the weekly distance under my feet. And why not doing this at different places and with some crowds keeping you company and cheering…
Sunny day, off to Hamburg for marathon no. 2 in 2013. Have I already told you that I am planning to do 12 marathons this year? I have to keep counting…
I went to my sister’s house last night, showing off my medal to my nephew and niece. After the usual exchange of niceties, my nephew went straight down to business: “What place did you do, uncle Roy?” he asked. I gave a slightly nervous laugh, remembering last year’s conversation about the London marathon, where I tried to get the point across that it does make sense to run a marathon, even if there is no chance of winning it and…
What a triumph. I don’t know my official time yet, but I am pretty confident that its just under 4 hours. My Runkeeper app says 3:59 and 20 secs – this treacherous little thing: during the whole run I was relying entirely on its average and current pace announcement each kilometre. It was reporting a solid 5:30min/k pace which would have carried me very comfortably in under 4 hours over the finish line. But the announcement proved to be wrong…
Here we go. Got myself into trouble again. Why am I keeping doing this? But the only way out is to go through it. It feels like minus two degrees. Welcome to the Paris Marathon. Start for my 4hours category in estimated 40 minutes.
I am slightly obsessed with the idea of online cheering. My friend Michael took advantage out of this by getting an extra boost for his marathon last year. Michael was using the app Runtastic which allows other connected Runtastic friends to click buttons on race day and send cheering noise to Michael’s earphones, while tracking his progress in real time. I want that. But I use Runkeeper. Runkeeper offers the elite membership, which I signed up for (and payed for).…
Strange how  the beginning of a new month comes now with the feeling of a new running challenge. My new year resolution says 10% more distance per week each month. April equals to 79 kilometres per week. It feels like it starts getting serious. Especially with the two marathon races I am planning to do in April: Paris this weekend and Hamburg two weeks later. The good thing about the marathons is, that they shave off 42k of my weekly…
My tight muscles are getting much better and the sore knee, too. I can’t really say what made the difference, but what I do know is that I spend much more time stretching, rolling and naked running. Not sure if everyone is familiar with the slightly ambiguous term “naked running”, so I think I better explain. I don’t strip off clothes for the run, but all things that might distract me. Like music or target pace and distance. It is…
It’s March and this means I have to step up my weekly distance. From 66 to 72k. I feel a bit under pressure now. My knee discomfort is not getting worse, but my leg muscles do, especially my calves. And I a wonder why. What changed over the last weeks that makes my muscles feel so tight and knotted? Can caffein withdrawal cause that? I am giving up coffee for lent and the withdrawal symptoms have been horrific: headache, tiredness,…
“In a sprint, if you don’t have the perfect form, you’re doomed. The ultra distance forgives injury, fatigue, bad form, and illness.” Ultrarunning legend Scott Jurik says this in his recent book Eat & Run. One example? He tells the story, where he tore ligaments in the middle of the Western States 100-Mile race. He decided to continue the run and noticed that the swelling stabilised his foot. He not only completed the grim course, but also became first and did…
I am now in week 8 of my plan to become an ultra runner. Apart from week 2 it has been fairly ok. Week 2 was a bit if a disaster. A light cold, bruised hurting hip and all sort of things dampened my spirit. I wrote an endless blog post about it, but it remained unpublished. Not sure if anybody would had been interested in so much moaning. I still managed to do my 60k that week though. Now…
I have to come up with some ideas, if I mean business with doing an ultra. And by “doing it” I actually mean: enjoying it, staying healthy and continue doing it. Running the Comrades with its 89k in 2014 is a realistic long term goal I suppose, but how to get there? What about increasing my total weekly running distance by 10% per every month? I did 55k per week in December. 10% increase sounds reasonable: January 60k/week, February 66k/week,…